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THE GREATER 
DISEASES OF THE LIVER. 



THE GREATER 

DISEASES OE THE LIVER: 

JAUNDICE. GALL-STONES 

ENLARGEMENTS TUMOURS. AND 

CANCER : 

AND THEIR TREATMENT. 

/ 

J. COMPTON BURNETT, M. D. 



" Das ist eben das wahre Geheitnniss, das 
Allen vor Augen 
Liegt, euch ewig umgibt, aber 
von Keinem gesehen^v 

c oPYr Schiller. 

t 

PHILADELPHIA : 
HAHNEMANN PUBLISHING HOUSE- 
1891. 




"RX33 3 
CB8 



Copyright, 1891, 

BY 
BOERICKE & TAFEL. 



Co tt?c 
5tl e tn o v 3 



OF 



Habemacfyer 

THE RESUSCITATOR OF 
PARACELSIC ORGAXOPATHY 

THESE PAGES ARE GRATEFULLY DEDICATED 



O)o 2tutf?ot\ 



PREFACE 



HpO those accustomed to treat diseases 
of the liver with remedies having 
an elective affinity for the organ itself, 
the contents of this volume must appear 
more or less self-evident. I refer more 
particularly to the practitioners of 
scientific therapeutics usually called 
homoeopaths. But the practitioners of 
traditional medicine will find in my 
pages a great deal to interest them, 
and not a little that is new ; new at 
least to them. 

Those of my readers who have 
a taste for the more strictly doctrinal 
part of my subject, I would refer to 
my small work entitled ' ' Diseases of 



x Preface. 

the Spleen and their Remedies Clini- 
cally Illustrated'," to which this is 
intended to be a companion volume. 

The prevailing ignorance of good 
organ-remedies is lamentable. Not long 
since a lady came to me for a chronic 
liver affection of nine years' standing, 
and, though her physician is a man of 
high standing in the profession, and a 
doctor of medicine of the University 
of London, his sole treatment had con- 
sisted in giving the accursed morphia 
to lull the pains. He had never even 
tried one single good organ-remedy, 
and this notwithstanding the fact that 
patient has long been profoundly 
jaundiced. And this, too, is I fear, 
a fair sample of the everyday work of 
the men of light and leading in the 
profession. 



Preface. xi 

The pain being the outcome of 
the disease, the treatment should have 
been directed to the causal complaint, 
and not to the effect — the pain. Had 
this been done the lady would, in all 
probability, have been cured of the 
fundamental disease ; as it is, her 
disease has become formidable, and 
probably incurable, and she herself is 
a hopeless, helpless, will-less morphia 
eater. 

It is in the hope of throwing a 
little light into this dismal darkness 
that these pages are sent to the Press. 

J. COMPTON BURNETT. 

5, Holies Street, 

Cavendish Square, W. 
October 22nd, 1890. 



The Greater 
Diseases of the Liver: 

Jaundice, Gall-stones, 

Enlargements, Ticmonrs, and Cancer, 

and their Treatment. 



JAUNDICE. 

[F anyone shall maintain that 
Jaundice is not a greater dis- 
ease of the liver, but a minor one, 
I shall reply, Then such a one has 
never had the curious complaint. 
Jaundice was the indirect cause 
of some of my earliest efforts at 
independent thought in medicine ; 
it was in this wise : — A student 

B 



2 The Greater Diseases 

was working with Professor H 

with the microscope while he had 
a bad cold in his head — in the hot 
trickling dewdrop stage — and find- 
ing that microscopizing under the 
circumstances was not an easy 
matter, he said to his professorial 
friend, " What's good for a cold 
in the head ?" 

"Oh," said he, " sniff up cold 
water into your nostrils — that'll 
cure it quickly.'' 

Studiosus set his microscope 
aside ; went home. Once there, 
forthwith sniffed cold water most 
diligently into his nostrils, and 
cured the said coryza there and 
then. A sweet cure ! as the se- 
quel shewed. 



of the Liver. 3 

The next day he had the 
beginning symptoms of catarrhal 
jaundice, and in two days the 
affection was well-established. 

Professor H. was again con- 
sulted, and said he must give up 
hospital work at once, and take 
a holiday in the hills. 

Being conversant with all the 
facts of the case, it occurred to me 
that as catarrhal jaundice was due 
to a catarrh of the gall-ducts, 
just as the coryza was a catarrh 
of the nose, so if we could only 
get at the gall-ducts as readily 
as at the nostrils, we might wash 
them out also, and thus acre the 
jaundice, as the coryza had been 
cured. 



» 



4 The Greater Diseases 

I have had a certain number 
of colds in the head to treat 
during the years that have since 
elapsed, but I have never recom- 
mended Professor H.'s plan of 
sniffing cold water into the nostrils, 
believing a catarrh of the nose to 
be less bad than a corresponding 
state of the gall-ducts. This 
simple narration really touches 
at the very foundations of all 
curing : The young man was not 
well ; nature sought to rid his 
organism of something harmful to 
his organismic self; she set up a 
watery discharge from a small 
portion of the mucous lining of the 
body, near the surface and not 
otherwise too much functionally 
occupied. This hot running from 



of the Liver. 5 

the nose was really a curative 
expression of the organism. (The 
young man had been long living 
and working in the most foul 
atmosphere of dissecting rooms 
and hospital wards.) The cold 
water stopped it (the flux, not the 
disease,) and then nature fell back 
upon the liver, as she so often 
does. 

Centrifugal fluxes and discharges 
should not be lightly stopped. 

Why the flux ? Whence the 
discharge ? Let the questions of 
the why ? and whence ? be an- 
swered as we go along, Here I 
merely insist upon the elementary 
truth that a morbid process having 



6 The Greater Diseases 

a, perhaps, time-honored name, 
may be nevertheless no disease at 
all, but merely a means of cure 
set up by nature herself, and that 
there are diseases which it is 
disadvantageous or dangerous to 
cure, that is to cure in the sense 
in which the verb to cure is com- 
monly used in English by the 
thoughtless. Of course to effect a 
really radical cure of any primary 
disease can never be other than a 
gain to the individual. 



of the Liver. 



Case of Catarrhal Jaundice 
cured by Chelidonium mafus. 

A good many years since 1 was 
summoned to see a country gentle- 
man for sudden indisposition. It 
was a rather tedious railway 
journey, and a humble friend of the 
family, anxious to enlighten me, 
told me that the squire had the 
" Yeller Janders? Yellow the 
patient was, indeed, and the colour 
was from jaundice! There were 
the usual symptoms — constipation , 
scanty urine of a dark yellow 
browny colour, and debility with 
depression of spirits. Chelidonium 
majus in small material doses, put 



8 The Greater Diseases 

matters right in a few days, leaving 
the patient, however, weak. 

" What medicine have you 
been giving my husband ?" 

" A new remedy." 

" What's its name ?■" 

'' Chelidonium majiis." 

" What's the English of that ?" 

" The greater Celandine." 

" Then it is not by any means 
a new remedy, for it is in my old 
Herbal y in which it is recommen- 
ded for jaundice." 

And so it was: the use of the 
greater Celandine in jaundice has 
trickled down to us through the 
ages from the primary source of 
the doctrine of signatures. 



of the Liver. 9 

Of Chelidonium majus, I would 
say that it is in this country the 
greatest liver medicine we have, 
and there is, in all conscience, no 
lack of hepatics. Some of my 
early success in practice was due 
to my use of Chelidonium. 

It came about thus : I went to 
see an important lady for a well- 
known physician in the north, he 
being too busy to attend, but said 
lady strongly objected to new 
doctors. She took a look at me — 
as I subsequently learned — from a 
position where she herself was 
invisible to me, and did not like 
the look of me. So I was sent 
away with many apologies from 
the daughter. Her hepatalgia was 
easier just at the moment: she 



io The Greater Diseases 

would wait till her own physician 
could come. 

A few days later the pain in 
her right side became unbearable, 
and said physician again sent me. 
This time I was admitted and 
found her in very great pain in the 
hepatic region : she had had it at 
intervals for very many years — 
about thirty years, if I remember 
rightly. The liver was very much 
enlarged and the pains very acute ; 
there was no jaundice, the tongue 
mapped. 

I mixed some Chelidoniiim 
majus and had it given pretty 
frequently : it eased the pain more 
promptly than ever the pain had 
been relieved before, and finally 



of the Liver. n 

cured it altogether. Her whole 
life was changed. To make 
amends for having refused to see 
me on my first calling upon her 
she presented me with a piece of 
plate, and sent me subsequently 
very many of her suffering friends. 

So einflusserich was this ven- 
erable dame that I feel her 
practical influence to this very 
day. 

This cure, and its gratifying 
results to a struggling young 
doctor, fixed my attention a good 
deal upon Chelidonium, and upon 
liver affections, which are every- 
where so common ; and it has been 
my lot to relieve or cure a very 
large number of liver diseases — 



12 The Greater Diseases 

and from this wide experience I 
now write. 

My first real acquaintance with 
Chelidoniitm was from Dr. Richard 
Hughes's " Pharmacodynamics/' a 
work to which I owe so much, 
and which I sincerely commend to 
all who wish to understand the 
actions of drugs. 

I would not be too sure of my 
botanic knowledge, but I have an 
idea that Chelidoniitm is the only 
plant, indigenous to this country, 
which possesses a yellow juice. 
That the colour of this juice led 
to its use in liver diseases on the 
lines of the doctrine of Signatures 
the historical^ competent will 
hardly deny. That it has a 



of the Liver. 13 

specific affinity for the great gall- 
organ anyone may verify for 
himself if he will take a few 
drachms of the mother tincture in 
divided doses. It is kindly and 
gentle in its action, which action is 
fully set n p with only a very 
minute dose, but inasmuch as my 
more intimate knowledge of it 
comes to me from the Rade- 
macherians, I have generally used 
it in small j^et material doses. 



It will be interesting to give 
Rademacher's experience with 
ClielidoJiium. 

He used it as an organ remedy, 
or in other words on the Homoeo- 



14 The Greater Diseases 

pathic principle in its elementary 
form of specificity of seat.* 

Rademacher's Use of 
Chelidoniiim. 

Radeinacher, with the charm- 
ing simplicity of really great 
knowledge, tells us in regard to 
Chelidonium, that he had long 
despised it as worthless, and con- 
fessedly to his shame, for he 

*I have entered so fully into the 
question of the identity of the organo- 
pathy of the Hohenheimians and the 
specificity of seat of the homoepaths, 
in my work entitled "Diseases of the 
Spleen and Their Remedies Clinically 
Illustrated" that I may fairly refer my 
readers hereto in lieu of going over the 
same ground again here. 



of the Liver, 15 

remarks that it was a celebrated 
hepatic remedy in olden times. 
(See his Erfarhrungsheillehre, 
p. 163.) 

He then enters into a long 
dissertation upon its action and 
comes to the conclusion that it 
affects the " inner liver." He says 
a physician need have no great 
experience to know that the 
disease of the liver, that in its 
perfected form shews itself as 
jaundice, has endless gradations 
that in every -day life and in 
medical speech are not regarded 
as jaundice. Still the very 
slightest degree of the jaundice- 
affection shews itself in the urine 
by its pale gold colour, and in the 



1 6 The Greater Diseases 

skin, particularly in that of the 
face, by its more or less dirty look. 
And where there is but little gall 
in the motions and no icteric 
discolouration of the skin, it 
follows that we have in such 
cases to deal with not merely an 
obstruction to the outflow T of the 
gall into the duodenum, but with 
that unknown organ by which the 
gall is prepared from the blood ; 
this gall-making organ is ill, so 
that bile is not duly prepared at 
all, and therefore none can be 
either poured out or absorbed into 
the skin, or cast out by the urine. 
This is what Rademacher calls 
the " inner liver," not indeed as an 
anatomical expression, but as a 
figure of speech to convey to the 



of the Liver. 17 

mind a more or less accurate and 
concrete conception of the sphere 
of action of the Chelidoniitni 
majus. 

This conception of the true 
sphere of action of Chelidonium is, 
I think, correct. 

The cases cited by Rader- 
macher are mostly u bilious 
fevers." 

Where the gall ducts are alone 
implicated he considers7V^.r vomica 
the right remedy, Hence Cheli- 
do7izum would be indicated in 
acholia as well as in jaundice 
when the affection is primary to 
the u inner liver." 

Raderaacher's favorite mode of 

c 



1 8 The Greater Diseases 

using it is the simple juice of the 

plant with just as much alcohol as 

will clarify and preserve it. His 

dose was at one time one scruple 

of his tincttire a day, but in 

chronic cases of liver affections he 

subsequently came down to tw r o or 

three drops a dose, given four or 

five times a day. He even came 

down to one-drop doses diluted in 

half-a-cupful of water, till at last 

he thinks he might be accused of 

copying the homoeopathic posology 

of " Mr. Hahnemann !" He tells 

us however ( 4 ^Erfahrungsheillehre" 

p, 176), that he first appreciated 

the curative value of small doses 

from Helmont,* who roused in 

*Opera om7iia, p. 552, in the chapter 
with the superscription Butler. 



of the Liver. 19 

his soul the thought that small 
doses of drugs might have great 
curative effects. 

But Rademacher confesses that 
he at first did not clearly perceive 
the importance of the small dose 
until he had got rid of his earlier 
and more gross views, and came 
from diligent observation to get 
concise views of primary organ- 
diseases as they really exist in 
nature. In a foot-note (p. 176) 
he protests that the small dose 
cannot be correctly spoken of 
as " homoeopathic/' but as being 
the property of Paracelsus, and 
refers to the eleventh chapter 
of the fifth book of Hohenheim's 
" Chirurgische Schriften," De 



20 The Greater Diseases 

Causis et origine luis Galliccz, 
which he recommends his readers 
to peruse t attentively, and con- 
cludes thus .-■.-..'." wenn sie 
dieses gethan, werden sie wol 
nicht mehr von homoopathischen 
Arzeneigaben sprechen, sondern 
sie werden begreifen, dass die 
Wahrheit — unwa% und unmessbare 
Arzeneigaben kbnnen, wenn das 
durch Krankheit verdnderte Verhalt- 
niss desKorpers znr Aussenwelt sich 
dazn eigene, wundervolle Heilwir 
knngen aussern — mit der soge- 
nannten homoopathischen Theorie 
gar nicht in Beruhrung kommt." 

In other words . . . unweighable 
and immeasurable doses of re- 
medies can produce wonderfully 



of the Liver. 21 

curative effects when the condition 
of the body in regard to its 
environment have been altered hy 
disease and thus rendered sus- 
ceptible thereto, and thus have 
nothing at all to do with the so- 
called homoeopathic theory. 

But this only b}' the way, I am 
writing of the Greater Diseases of 
the Liver; still it is pretty evident 
that Rademacher in his later days 
had become conscious that his 
own practice and teachings were 
leading him, nilly-willy, homoeo- 
path-wards. 



2 2 The Greater Diseases 



Case of Enlargement of the 

jliver with Jaundice cured 

by CheUdonium. 

A lady of seventy, stout, and 
given to very little exercise, came 
under my observation, and on 
examination I found her severe 
and frequent right-sided pains 
were due to a swelled liver, which 
was tender in pressure. Skin and 
conjunctivae subicteric, motions 
containing but very little bile ; 
urine on the contrary loaded with 
it. vShe was at the seaside and 
this it was, she said, that had 
upset her liver. Tongue coated, 
giddy, low-spirited, pulse inter- 



of the Liver. 23 

mittent, insomnia, lethargic, loss 
of appetite, fear of death. 

Chelidoniiim ma/us in small 
material doses resulted in complete 
recovery in ten days, when she 
returned home with a regular 
pulse, clear eyes and skin, and all 
the functions normal, and very 
decidedly of opinion that life, even 
at seventy years of age, is not at 
all a bad thing. 

Enlarged Liver and Conges- 
tion of the Right Lung, 
cured by Ckelidontum. 

A young officer in the Army 
was invalided home from India for 
liver and lung disease and came 



24 The Greater Diseases 

to me. I found his liver large and 
tender, the right lung engorged, 
his skin very muddy , bowels costive, 
and he was dreadfully depressed 
and weak. He was quite sure he 
was in consumption. The lung 
affection I regarded as consecutive 
to the engorgement of the liver, 
there being, in the words of 
Rademacher, a primary affection 
of the u inner" liver. Chelidonium 
in small material doses quite 
restored him to health in three 
weeks. In due course he returned 
to his regiment. 



of the Liver. 25 

Case of Pronounced Jaundice 
Cured by Chelzdonzum. 

A middle-aged gentleman, a 
merchant, returned from the East 
Indies with very severe jaundice, 
which had resulted in considerable 
emaciation. The voyage home 
and a stay of some duration in the 
north had not mended matters. 
He was very depressed in spirits, 
almost the colour of mahogany, 
and the urine was verv scant and 
brown-yellow. His bowels very 
constipated. 

How quickly and pleasantly he 
was cured, he even now never 
tires of telling his Manchester 
friends. 



26 The Greater Diseases 

I might tell of a lady who had 
severe and long-lasting jaundice 
and who was speedily cured by 
Chelidonium, and of a notable 
number of other cases of liver 
affections cured by it, but it is 
needless. What I have already 
narrated will suffice. 

I would, however, just dwell 
upon the fact that Chelzdonzum will 
very frequently cure engorgements 
of the right lung even when it is a 
concomitant of true phthisis, but it 
has no influence over the general 
phthisical state, other than what 
pertains to, and results from, the 
lower half of the right lung and 
liver. As an intercurrent remedy 
in the hepatic complications of 



of the Liver. 27 

phthisis it is capable of rendering 
important service. 

Likewise as an intercurrent 
remedy in gall-stones it is useful, 
as is also Myrica cerifera, but both 
stand far behind Hydrastes in this 
affection. 

My own conception of its true 
seat of action is that it affects the 
liver cells : Rademacher's " inner" 
liver. 

There are numerous affections 
of the liver that Chelidonium will 
not touch curatively at all, and 
therefore it must not be regarded 
as a liver cure-all, which it is 
not. 



28 The' Greater Diseases 

For instance, it affects the left 
lobe of the liver much less than 
does Carduus Marice, to a con- 
sideration of which we will proceed 
after having first given a short 
account of Rademacher's use of 
a combination of Chelidonium and 
Calcarea muriatica. 



Rademacher'S Use of Chelidonium 
and Liq. Calcarice muriat. 

Our author tells us he is con- 
vinced that there exists in nature 
a liver disease that can only be 
cured by a mixture of Chelidonium 
and Liq Calcariae Muriat. 



of the Liver. 29 

This is his formula 2— 

R Liq. Calcariae muriat., 5 ii. 
Tinct. Chelidonii, g i. 
M. 

He administered fifteen drops 
in half-a-cupful of water five times 
a day. With this he cured many 
eases of grave fevers and hepatic 
affections that did not mend with 
either remedy by itself, but he tells 
us he knows of no reliable or 
characteristic indications for its 
choice. 

I might add that muriatic acid 
once had a seemingly well-founded 
reputation as a liver remedy ; and 
some still esteem it highly. 



30 The Greater Diseases 



The Curative Sphere of Carduus 

MaricB in LivER, Spleen, and 

Abdominal Affections. 

Certain remedies have very 
limited special spheres of influence 
and our power to cure diseases is 
largely conditioned by our know- 
ledge of such spheres. I am 
increasingly impressed with the 
importance of knowing where the 
remedy acts by special elective 
affinity. As I have dealt with 
spleen affections by themselves, 
without making any special re- 
ference to Carduus Marice (the 
seeds are the officinal part), I will 
at once exemplify its action here. 



of the Liver. 31 

Enlargement of Liver and 

Spleen Cured by 

Cardans. 

A young lady, of sixteen sum- 
mers, was brought to me by her 
mother on the seventh of Septem- 
ber, 1887, for severe attacks of 
vomiting that had lasted for three 
months. She was often roused 
rudely from her sleep in the 
morning with an attack of vomit- 
ing. Her constitution had been 
damaged by diphtheria, and 
eighteen months previously she 
had had varicella. I treated the 
case symptomatically with great 
relief to the vomiting, but the 



32 The Greater Diseases 

pains in the abdomen became 
rather worse than better. 

After I had given her my old 
favorite Nat. mur. 6 she was still 
further improved, but there the 
thing still was : I had relieved the 
symptoms but I had not cured the 
real primary seat of the same. I 
then did what might with advan- 
tage have been done before the 
treatment was begun, viz.: I made 
a careful physical examination of 
the bare epigastrium and of the 
two hypochondria, With what 
result ? The note in my case 
book taken at the time will 
enlighten us . . . . " Liver and 
spleen both very much enlarged so 
that they seem almost to fill the 
abdomen." 



of the Liver. 33 

Here I had to do with the 
severe and long-lasting vomiting 
which yielded partially to close 
symptomatic treatment but would 
not get qtiite well .... (Oh, how 
often are we in this unsatisfactory 
state) ; and a physical examination 
revealed the reason of my failure. 
I had treated the case with 
remedies that were homcepathic 
to the superficial symptoms, but 
NOT homoeopathic to the cause of 
those symptoms ; the degree of 
homoeopathicity was not adequate 
though it went a long way 
towards it. 

Here I fell back upon my 
Rademacherian experience with 
Car dims and gave five drops of the 
matrix tincture in a. table spoonful 

D 



34 The Greater Diseases 

of water, night and morning, and 
this cnred the enlargement both of 
Spleen and of Liver, and as this 
enlargement was the cause of the 
pains and vomiting, of conrse 
pains and vomiting likewise dis- 
appeared. 

The only further abnormality 
which I conld discover in the 
young lady after taking the Carduns 
Marice for about five weeks was an 
indurated condition of a few of the 
cervical glands of her left side : 
the side on which she had been 
vaccinated ; Thuja occidental-is 30, 
in infrequent doses, cured these 
and patient has had no vomiting 
or any of its concomitants since. 
She continues well to date. 



of the Liver. 35 

Although my own prescription 
of Cardmis was from pure experi- 
ence, there can be hardly any 
doubt that an adequate proving 
would shew its homoeopathicity to 
the case, inclusive of the enlarge- 
ments of liver and spleen. 

Riel's proving of Cardials shews 
it to produce pathogenetically : 
" nausea, uneasiness, pain, vom- 
iting, with inflation of the 
abdomen, &c" 

The generally improved ap- 
pearance of the young lady after 
she had been a month under the 
Carduus was very striking, and 
repeatedly remarked upon, by 
friends who were not acquainted 



36 The Greater Diseases 

with the circumstances of her 
ill-health and its treatment at all. 

The kind of liver enlargement 
which 'Carduus cures is in the 
transverse measurement. 

By way of comparison I will 
now quite shortly exemplify the 
kind of enlargement of the liver 
which is cured by Chelidonium ; it 
will be seen that the comparison 
is crude and mechanical, yet 
withal, I submit, not without 
practical value. 



of the Liver. 37 



Enlargement of the Liver in 

the Perpendicular Line 

cured by Cheltdomum. 

An independent gentleman of 
thirty, usually resident in Paris, 
came over to London to consult 
me in the early part of the } T ear 
1886, and that for his liver and 
for dyspepsia. He had twice had 
jaundice in previous times. His 
symptoms were waterbrash, indi- 
gestion, constipation, attacks of 
intra-abdominal chilliness ; he was 
very dusky, his urine had a strongly 
urinous smell. His liver reaches 
almost up to the right nipple. 



38 The Greater Diseases 

An ounce of the tincture 
brought the liver back to the 
normal ; the dose was five drops 
in water, two or three times a day, 
and sometimes once a day. But 
altogether he consumed nearly an 
ounce. 

This is the kind of hepatic 
enlargement which Chelidonium 
rights in small material doses. 
But it did not restore the patient 
to complete health ; why ? For 
the simple reason that the increase 
in the perpendicular measurement 
of the liver was only a part of his 
complaint, the other bearings of 
the case being foreign to my 
present thesis. Suffice it to say 
that his liver was cured by the 



of the Liver. 39 

Chelidonium, and patient continues 
well in these (and now in the 
other) respects to the present 
time. 



It is well to realize that an 
organ-remedy while capable of 
curing an organ-disease, and all 
the concomitant symptoms which 
arise from the organ-disease, never- 
theless can in the nature of things 
not cure the concomitant symptoms 
in the patient when these symp- 
toms stand in no nexus with such 
organ-disease. Thus I treated a 
young lady for a liver disease and 
gave her successively Carduus, 
Chelidoniiim,Natrnm Sulp/mrictim, 
Taraxacum. 



40 The Greater Diseases 

She had a mapped tongue and 
vomiting, with headaches and 
squinting. The liver was reduced 
to its right dimensions and the 
vomiting was cured, but the map- 
piness of the tongue remained, 
and patient did not feel well. But 
the tongue became normal after a 
month of Thuja 30. She had 
headaches which she herself term- 
ed bilious and the others neuralgic, 
and there was a third kind of 
headache called by another name 
and which seemed distinctly con- 
nected with the squinting. The 
bilious headaches ceased after the 
use of the before-mentioned hepa- 
tics ; the neuralgic headaches 
continued till after the Thuja, and 
disappeared simultaneously with 



oj the Liver. 41 

the mapped state of the tongue. 
The squint-headaches she still 
gets, and remedies like Glonoin and 
Gelsemiiim do them good. 

From these considerations it is 
manifest that there are cases that 
cannot possibly be cured by one 
remedy and inasmuch as the 
symptoms form part respectively 
of groups of different causations, 
covering the totality of all the 
symptoms present in the patient 
would be a useless and fruitless 
task. Hence it is that Rade- 
macherian organ-testing helps me 
so much in my everyday practical 
clinical life; for, if I cure an 
organ with its Appropiatum Para- 
ce/sz) and certain symptoms go 



42 The Greater Diseases 

while others remain I am enabled 
slowly to unravel the most com- 
plex groups of symptoms and 
finally find a simile or even the 
simillimum of the ground-evil. 

The adage Naturam morborum 
ostendunt cura hones also comes in 
here as an auxiliary. With me it 
is an axiom to relieve uncom- 
fortable or dangerous organ-states 
with simple organ-remedies as 
promptly as possible, leaving the 
more remote and deeper-going to 
be afterwards considered, and 
treated, if possible, with its patho- 
logical simillimum, or else aetiologi- 
cally, say according to Hahnemann 
in his Coethen phase. 



of the Liver. 43 



Carduus Maries in its Relation 
with Liver and the Skin. 

Perhaps it would be more 
correct to think of the matter as 
twigs of the same branch. Thus 
in my small work on the Skin* I 
mention the seeming connection 
between the cutaneous surface of 
the sternum and other internal 
affections, notably of the left lobe 
of the liver therewith. 

Subsequent experience has 
taught me that although the 
Carduus cures these cases very 

*" Diseases of the Skin from the 
Organismic Standpoint. "-London, 1886. 



44 The Create?- Diseases 

promptly and indeed brilliantly, 
still the. cutaneous eruption is apt 
to recur. In support of this con- 
nection ; or, perhaps, it might be 
wiser to say concomitancy, I there 
give some Carduus cases thus : — 

The " Sternal Patch." 

One often meets with liver 
affections connected with cutane- 
ous manifestations. 

I would like particularly to refer 
to a patch of eruption on the skin 
covering the lower part of the 
sternum which I have several 
times found co-exist w r ith heart 
disease and swelling of the left lobe 
of the liver. In my case-takings 
I call it the "sternal patch." 



of the Liver. 45 

I have four such cases in ray 
mind at this moment, the first I 
will narrate is that of a mayor of a 
large town in the north : — He had 
a patch of brownish eruption on 
the sternal portion of thorax of the 
size of a woman's palm ; with it 
were associated an enlarged liver 
and a cardiac affection evidenced 
by palpitation, systolic murmur, 
and general uneasiness. He came 
to town to see me at odd intervals 
for about two } r ears, and was then 
discharged cured. He has passed 
under my observation since, but 
though his liver gives no trouble 
the same cannot be said of his 
skin, and he has moreover pyor- 
rlicea alveolaris. 



46 The Greater Diseases 

I treated him antipsorically and 
organopathically, the most notable 
benefit being derived from Carduus 
Marzce in five drop doses of the 
strong tincture given three times a 
day. 

The second I remember was a 
Manchester merchant, with the 
same kind of cntaneons patch on 
the sternum, and very notable 
heart trouble with arcus senilis as 
a concomitant. Here the ease and 
comfort brought by the Carduus 
Maries were very striking. Under 
date of January 31^/, 1883, I find 
in my case book these words of 
the enthusiastic patient— " It had 
a most marvellous effect, soon 
made me right ; the patch went 



of the Liver. 47 

away in a fortnight ; had had it for 
years/' 

This gentleman has remained 
under my care, calling upon me at 
odd times when in town, and 
during the past two years has had 
besides the strong tincture of 
Carduus, Bellis Perennis 1, Aurum 
Metallicum 4, Vanadium 6, and 
Acidum Oxalicum 3*, and some 
other remedies, and I consider him 
vastly improved, and his life — 
speaking commercially — worth 40 
per cent, more than previously. 

The third case was that of a 
New York merchant, who suffered 
from liver and had come over to 
Europe to consult a phj^sician, as 
he seemed to get no better from 
the treatment of his New York 



48 The Greater Diseases 

advisers. I found his liver very 
much enlarged, and also the 
before-mentioned sternal patch of 
skin-disease. I gave him Carduns 
in like dose to the foregoing, and 
he came in a week declaring 
himself quite well. I advised him 
to remain awhile under observa- 
tion, to see if the cure proved 
permanent, but he hurried out of 
my room in great glee, and I never 
saw him again. 

The fourth case in which I 
found the sternal patch and 
enlarged liver, giddiness, and pal- 
pitations of the heart, was that of 
a London lawyer. Here the liver 
got well, and the heart too, 
together with the giddiness, but it 



of the Liver. 49 

needed a course of antipsoric 
treatment to finish the cure of the 
patch of diseased skin. I might 
say the same of a fifth case, an 
officer in the Royal Navy, where 
this patch co-exists with hyper- 
trophied liver, and in which the 
affair has a specific air about it, 
probably inherited, and it may be 
that when Sarcognomy is better 
understood, and when the relations 
of the various cutaneous regions 
will be recognized as constituting 
the very base of medical and medi- 
cinal diagnosis, this sternal patch 
will be understood to indicate 
11 liver and heart." 

But the following Case cured 
by Cardnus is also instructive in 

E 



50 The Greate}' Diseases 

considering its relationship to skin 
and liver. 

A city merchant, thirty years 
of age, unmarried, came to me in 
May, 1888, for windy dyspepsia, 
the probable ground-work of which 
proved to be an enlargement both 
of liver and spleen, and he had 
amongst other things very numer- 
ous sebaceous cysts strewn about 
his body, looking for all the world 
like the malva seeds (cases), 
children call cheeses. 

At first I gave Ceanothiis 
Americanus, believing it to be 
primarily a spleen affection, and 
then Pulsatilla, but they did no 
great good; when Cardans, given 



of the Liver. 51 

for a little over a month, brought 
the liver back to the normal and 
all the wee wens were gone. 

The enlargement of the liver 
and the wens disappeared simul- 
taneously, but the genuinely causal 
nature of both was neither hepatic 
nor cutaneous : That was scrofula. 
But as scrofula can only be treated 
in its manifestations, he who treats 
such manifestations successfully 
cures it. The general improve- 
ment under Cardiacs was most 
striking and lasting : patient got 
quite well and has since happily 
married. 

E. Stahl speaks in his Disserta- 
tions most highly of Carduus in 
those inflammations of the chest 



52 The Greater Diseases 

which are accompanied by gall 
fevers, and it was from him that 
Rademacher first learned its use 
and never ceased to prize it, 
notably in blood spitting from liver 
and spleen engorgements. No 
remedy, he declares, in our whole 
drug store, can compare to Car- 
duus when there are stitches in 
the side with bloody expectoration. 
He recommends his readers to 
note well where the last trace of 
pain is felt as it dies away, as that 
is likely to be the primary seat of 
the real disease. 



of the Liver. 53 

Case of Jaundice in a New- 
born Babe, cured by 
My r tea Cerifera. 

An able accoucheur attended a 
lady who bore a jaundiced babe; 
said he, " I cannot give that wee 
thing any medicine, so you had 
better send for your homoeopath 
(meaning me), as he can give 
some of his 'pips'!" This was 
done and pilules of Myrica Cerifera 
3 X (crushed into a powder and 
rubbed on the baby's tongue) 
rapidly cured him, and he at once 
began to put on flesh, and has 
thriven ever since. Before taking 
the Myrica he was very weedy, 
thin, and leathery-looking. 

Myrica Cerifera is one of the 



54 The Greater Diseases 

very valuable additions to our 
materia medica that have come to 
us from America. I have often 
used it in liver disease, notably in 
bad cases of jaundice, with striking 
success; it produces jaundice in 
the healthy pathogenetically, and 
is very searching in its action. It 
was the great American Samuel 
Thomson, the botanic practitioner, 
who brought it into notice. A 
pale green wax is obtained from 
its berries, and hence it is called 
ceriferus, or wax-bearing. Its 
powdered bark was Thomson's 
u canker powder," and he advised 
it in all discharges from the 
mucous surfaces, especially in 
leucorrhoea, dysentery, and nasal 
catarrh. 



of the Liver. 55 

Dr. Leland Walker's proving, 
as given in " Hale's New Rem- 
edies," shews an accnrate pictnre of 
severe catarrhal jaundice; we are, 
therefore, on indisputably scientific 
ground when we prescribe Myrica 
for catarrhal jaundice. No wonder 
that the old American botanists 
practised with so much success. 
That Thomson was a close and 
accurate observer may be seen 
from the fact that he commends it 
to " disengage the thick viscid 
secretions of the mucous mem- 
brane," for we find Walker's patho- 
genetic Myrica-catarrh was of the 
same viscid quality ; he says : 
" throat and nasal organs filled 
with an offensive tenacious mucus." 



56 The Greater Diseases 

Leptandra Virginica 
Is another valuable contribution 
from America, affecting the liver, 
mucous membrane, lungs, and 
pleura. Roughly, it is the mer- 
cury of the eclectics. It has never 
been a favourite of mine, simply 
because I have not needed it, 
inasmuch as it closely resembles 
Chelidonium in its effects. I once 
saw Dr. Reginald Jones, of 
Birkenhead, make a brilliant cure 
of a severe case of right-sided 
pneumonia with it — its prompt, 
decisive, curative action was un- 
mistakeable. 

In the lazy livers of city men, 
I have used Leptandrin 3 X in six- 



of the Liver. 57 

grain doses with great satisfaction 
to the patients. 

Sanguinaria Canadensis is, in 
truth, a liver medicine, but not 
primarily or principally so, and 
is too great a remedy to be 
mentioned only in passing. 

Podophyllum Peltatum is a 
great liver remedy, and has been 
greatly abused. Its use in " torpid 
liver " is not good practice, and 
has done much harm. Its true 
scientific homoeopathic use is in 
diarrhoea from overflowing bile, 
with much irritation, and even 
inflammation of the gut. It once 
stood me in good stead in a case 
of diarrhoea that threatened to end 
fatally — at any rate the allopathic 



58 The Greater Diseases 
family adviser had informed the 
lady's husband that he considered 
the patient would not recover, as 
nothing would check the diarrhoea, 
and the lady was seemingly sink- 
ing. I was telegraphed for, and 
had to travel nearly 200 miles. 
On arriving, the family physician, 
although he had given the patient 
up as past recovery, declined to 
meet me because of my homoeo- 
pathic creed, and this although he 
professed to be a friend of the 
family, and only lived two doors 
off. The stools were foul-smelling, 
hot, bilious, excoriating, and passed 
out of the anus in a constant 
dribble. The patient had become 
too weak to be raised or even 
adequately helped, and things had 



of the Liver. 59 

to be just left. I studied the case 
a short time, and finally decided 
upon Podophyllum 6. The next 
evening patient was convalescent, 
and I returned to town. The 
cure was complete and permanent. 
When the family physician had 
heard of my departure, he return- 
ed and very kindly watched the 
case for me, still giving my 
remedy. " Why," said he, " Podo- 
phyllum is one of our allopathic 
medicines, it is not a homoeopathic 
medicine at all ; they have stolen 
it from us." 

The poor ignoramus still knows 
not that the use of the remedy, 
1. e., the principle on which it is 
used, is the point at issue. 



60 The Greater Diseases 

It might be asked, why would 
this dapper medico not meet the 
writer over a supposedly dying 
patient, and would yet accept the 
more humble position of merely 
watching the case and giving my 
remedy after I had departed ? 

It was thus : He and another 
doctor in the place each consid- 
ered himself the first man there ; 
and if his rival had heard that he 
had met a homoeopathic practi- 
tioner in proper consultation, he 
would have been denounced for 
unprofessional conduct, and his 
status lowered in the eyes of dear 
Mrs. and Dr. Grundy. He 
declared to the family that he 
personally should have been 



of the Liver. 61 

delighted to have met me, but 
that he had to consider his own 
position. 

Such is medical life here in 
England to-day. Still, for all 
that, Podophyllum 6, humanly 
speaking, saved the lady's life ; 
and I, having done my duty, 
have therein my reward, and I 
thank God for the privilege. 

In the debility from jaundice 
I have found Picric Acid very 
helpful. I have commonly used 
it in the third dilution. 

I have found the Brassica 
Murialis, which Dr. Heath tells 
me should be called Diplotaxis 



62 The Greater Diseases 

Temufolza ) of good service in the 
lazy livers of relaxing climates, 
when patients feel as if they could 
scarcely crawl about from sheer 
goneness. It is homoeopathic to 
such, as I know from a fragment- 
ary proving made by myself in 
1874. 



Gallstones. 

In the treatment of gallstones 
Ave have to consider the attacks 
of gall colic and the treatment of 
the stones themselves when they 
lie in the gall bladder giving no 
one any trouble. I have treated 
gallstones and gallstone colic a 
good many times with hepatics 



of the Liver. 63 

of various kinds, and have found 
myself best in the painful attacks 
with Hydrastis Canadensis, origin- 
ally given from a suggestion of 
Dr. Henry Thomas. A great 
many remedies stand in good 
repute for the treatment of this 
almost unique complaint. I have 
used as much as ten-drop doses of 
the strong tincture of Hydrastis, 
given every half-hour in very warm 
water, and known it succeed in a 
few hours after everything had 
failed. In one case the patient 
had lain for 40 hours in terrible 
agony, unrelieved by any known 
thing. It is odd that people who 
have been taking Hydrastis, not 
infrequently think they have been 



64 The Greater Diseases 

taking Opium. After the attack 
of pain is over, it is best to set 
about curing the liver itself by a 
long course of homoeopathically- 
indicated remedies, whose names 
are legion ; for it must be manifest 
that gallstones are a secondary 
affection, due to a previous con- 
dition either of the liver or of the 
gall, or of the gall bladder, or of 
the linings of the ducts. In some 
cases I have thought the whole 
state had started originally in 
catarrhal jaundice. 

My own procedure I will 
exemplify by narrating a case in 
point at some length. 



of the Liver. 65 

Case of Gallstones and 
Organic Disease of Liver. 
A lady of fifty ' years of age 
came under my observation early 
in the year 1888 with a very 
muddy complexion, subicteric 
whites of the eyes. She suffered 
very much from acidity and also 
from vomiting. 

She told me she had been a 
sufferer from her liver for many 
years ; severe bilious headaches 
and dyspepsia. She had been 
mercurialized for her liver till all 
her teeth fell out, and now her 
digestion had given in almost 
completely, and she had become 
so thin that her appearance was 

F 



66 The Greater Diseases 

quite cachetic. She had got so 
frightened of anything bringing on 
her attacks of gall colic that she 
avoided almost every article of 
food. 

Owing to her great emaciation 
and trim build I was able to make 
the diagnosis of gallstones from 
actually feeling them, a thing I 
am very rarely able to do myself. 
The region of the gall bladder 
was, however, so tender that a 
very little feeling with my hands 
was as much as she could bear. I 
treated her for close upon two 
years, and then she was a plump, 
bonny woman, enjoying her life 
and dining out with her friends. 
Her skin had become compara- 



of the Liver. 67 

tively healthy looking, though not 
as clear as a healthy English 
lady's generally is. 

I chose the remedies on homoe- 
opathic indications, and here and 
there as Rademacher would have 
done; and, when I the last few 
times examined the region of the 
gall bladder, I entirely failed to 
find any stones. 

She had the following remedies 
seriatim, Ignatia aviara i x , Cheli- 
donium i x and </>, Nux vomica i x , 
Cholesterine 3 X , Hydrastis Can. *, 
Thuja occ. 30, Sanguinaria Can. *, 
Car dims Maricz * , and Bilirubin. 5. 
All these remedies did their por- 
tion of the good, and were given as 
they were indicated. 



68 The Greater Diseases 

I have rarely seen a more 
satisfactory cure of a difficult, 
almost desperate, chronic case, 
and quite as rarely had a patient, 
with a worse family history. 
Which remedy cured the patient ? 
All of them. 

There is a Carduus case that 
should have come in earlier on, 
but I had mislaid the MS., and 
as it is short I will add it here, 
and principally because it neatly 
exemplifies the Carduus action. 
Five years have elapsed since the 
patient was cured, and there has 
been no return of any of the 
symptoms, and he has continued 
otherwise in uninterruptedly good 
health. 



of the Liver. 69 



Hypertrophy of left lobe of 
the Liver ; Slight Hyper- 
trophy of the Heart ; 
Sternal Patch. 

On January 27///, 1885, a } r oung 
gentleman, twenty-one years of 
age, and who had long been ailing 
of no one seemed to know what, 
was sent by his father to me 
" to be thoroughly overhauled 
and put right." The overhauling 
disclosed slight enlargement of 
the heart, considerable enlarge- 
ment of the left lobe of the liver, 
and a very prominent sternal patch. 
Patient complained of suffering a 
good deal from giddiness. 



70 The Greater Diseases 

Tfy Carduus Maricz </>, five drops 

in water night and morning. 

# 

He was discharged permanently 
cured in six months. During a 
considerable portion of the time 
he was taking the Carduus, which 
quite set heart and liver right, 
but the sternal patch I had to 
cure nosodically, of which . . 
une autre fois. I often see members 
of this gentleman's family includ- 
ing his parents, and know, as I 
said just now, that he has con- 
tinued well ever since. 

We will now return to gall- 
stones. 

An elderly lady came under 
my observation early in the 






of the Liver. 71 

summer of 1888, for gallstones, 
characterised by frequent recur- 
rent attacks of jaundice, colic, 
and vomiting, with the usual 
agonizing pains. She was under 
me a good many months — about 
eighteen, if I remember rightly — 
and then discontinued her treat- 
ment, and has since continued 
well. I strongly urged her to go 
on longer, lest there should still 
be present the remains of the old 
colic-causing stones, but to no 
avail. Why should I continue 
taking medicines when I am well ? 

She had in succession (and 
several repeatedly) , Kali Bzchrom- 
icnm, Carduus Marice, Hydrastis 
Canadensis, Primus Virginiana, 



72 The Greater Diseases 

Cholesterine, lodoformum, and final- 
ly Ferrum Picriciim 3 X . The last- 
named medicine does capital 
service in bilious debility. 



Case of Colic from Gallstones. 

A middle-aged gentleman 
brought his wife to me three 
years since to be treated for 
gallstones, and the usual attacks 
of colic with vomiting, that came 
on at odd intervals, from known 
and unknown causes. Patient had 
been long under their own doctor 
in the country, but to no good 
purpose ; in fact, a chronic pain 
in the right side had been super- 
added to the before-mentioned 



of the Liver, 73 

colic attacks, and patient had lost 
flesh a good deal. She paid me 
visits once a month for many 
months, until she was quite well 
and in a thoroughly thriving 
condition. 

However, I told the husband 
that I did not think the biliary 
calculi were really entirely gone, 
and that I thought it would be 
wise to continue with the use 
of gentle gall-medicines till we 
had sounder ground for believing 
that there would be no further 
relapses. 

But patient seemed and looked 
in such capital health that there 
really seemed, from their stand- 



74 The Greater Diseases 

point, no reason for continuing 
my treatment, so my warning 
was not regarded. 

The remedies that helped so 
brilliantly in this case were 
Hydrastis, Carduus, Chelidonium 
and Berberis, and two or three 
others which I have not noted. 

It must be fully a year since 
I saw any of the family, but this 
morning I was prescribing for her 
brother-in-law, who told me that 
she is now lying in the country 
very ill with gallstones, and her 
attending physicians consider her 
case hopeless. So all experience 
goes to show that the after- 
treatment of gallstones should be 



of the Liver. 75 

carried on for a very long time, 
so as to get rid of the disease 
altogether. Long delay at the 
printers' enables me to add that 
after having been thus given tip, 
this lady again placed herself under 
my care, and has at la'st completely 
recovered her health, Euonymin 
and Thlaspi Bursa Pastoris 
* having helped most. 

How the biliary calculi are 
dissolved I am unable to say ; 
that they are eventually really 
and truly got rid of by dissolu- 
tion I infer from the fact that the 
sufferers get well and remain so. 

It might be asked : What is 
your indication for Bursa Pastoris 
in Gallstones ? 



76 The Greater Diseases 

Answer : When the original 
liver-ailing started primarily from 
the womb. I will refer to this 
again. 

Chronic Bilousness and Emacia- 
tion cured by Chelidonium. 

A strumous gentleman, about 
thirty years of age, came over 
from Ireland to consult me with 
regard to loss of flesh, dyspepsia, 
and biliousness. He was over 
six feet in height, and only weighed 
ten stone. Hair reddish ; thorax 
flat ; pronounced venous zig-zag ; 
digestion very weak ; poor appe- 
tite ; a brownish rash across the 
epigastrium ; cannot digest vege- 
tables. 



of ihe Liver. 77 

The state of the liver led me 
to prescribe Chelidonium 1 ; five 
drops in water night and morning. 

Under this prescription (with 
the same diet, occupation, and 
place of abode as previously), he 
increased five pounds in weight in 
thirty-two days. In six months he 
had reached 10-stone 12 lbs. in 
weight, and he long after re- 
ported to me that he had " re- 
mained in very good health, 
indeed." Besides being for some 
months under the influence of 
Chelzdontumfet had inter-currently 
also Badiaga 3 X and Psorinttm 30, 
each during one month. 

The state of the skin caused 
me to interpose Psurinnm, and 



j 8 The Greater Diseases 

some symptoms of indigestion led 
me to give the Badiaga. 

But the strikingly great ame- 
lioration set in first under the 
sole influence of the Chelidonium, 
but this remedy did not extend 
its influence far enough or wide 
enough, and hence it had to be 
supplemented by the other two, 
but with the spheres of action of 
them we are here not concerned. 

Enlargement of Liver, 

producing Shortness of Breath 

and Palpitation, cured by 

Chelidonium majus 3 X . 

Some years since a retired 
merchant, sixty-eight years of age, 



of the u Liver. 79 

consulted me for a supposed affec- 
tion of his heart. He complained 
of obesity, fulness in the stomach, 
volent perspirations on moving 
about — so much so that he was in 
the habit of changing shirts during 
the forenoon already; feels puff3 r 
on going up a hill ; loses his breath 
from the stomach on the least hurry. 
Has a fresh healthy look. No ar- 
cus senilis. Is very active, and 
takes a good deal of exercise. 

After taking twenty drops of 
Chelidonitmi maj. 3 X per diem for a 
few weeks I noted, at his dictation : 
" The puffiness is much better; 
I can walk with greater ease ; I 
feel as if something were gone 
from me." That is to say, his 



So The Greater Diseases 

swelled liver had gone down and 
there was more playroom for his 
lungs and heart. 

He weighed 15-stone 9 lbs., 
and under the action of Chelidon- 
ium this came down to 15-stone 
6 lbs. 

He afterwards had Cheltdonium 
1, and also Euonymin 3 X , and after 
15 months' treatment he had gone 
down one stone in weight, and was 
able to go up hill and upstairs 
with comfort. 

I saw him a year later for neur- 
algia, when Silicea 200 was follow- 
ed by the disappearance of the 
neuralgia. 



of the Liver. 81 

Case of Gall Colic cured by 
My r tea Cerifera 3 X . 

In the year 1889 a lady of 
some 30 odd years of age came 
to consult me for her liver. She 
seemed healthy and bright, but 
severe pains in her right side, 
pyrosis, and certain brown patches 
on her skin clearly implicated the 
liver. Patient took for a month 
Chelidonium <*> with distinct benefit. 
She afterwards had Ignatia amara 1 
and subsequently Hydrastis Can. <*>, 
and both with some considerable 
benefit. 

She came then to town to see 
me, when I again failed to find 

G 



82 The Greater Diseases 

anything to account for her dys- 
pepsia, though the pain I could 
trace clearly to the gall-bladder. 

After taking Myrica cerif. 3 X , 
five drops in a table-spoonful of 
water, for some weeks, I received 
a very grateful letter from her, in 
which she says : " That medicine 
has done me a great deal of good ; 
I have lost all pain in my side, 
and have had only one headache, 
and no indigestion, and I walk six 
miles a day." 

What the exact state of the 
gall-ducts was of course I could 
not tell ; I could not feel any 
calculi; none had ever been 
passed, she thought. 



of the Liver, 83 

Although Chelidonium and 
Hydrastis both did much good, it 
was the Myrica that really hit the 
mark curatively. 

When a patient gets the right 
organ-remedy it is often really 
astonishing how their feeling of 
bien-etre is augmented : they not 
only become well, they very em- 
phatically feel it; they are, as it 
w r ere, aggressively well. 

Of course, a good complexion 
means health, more or less, but 
the liver is very specially involved 
in producing a clean skin and clear 
complexion ; and I propose by- 
and-bye to dilate upon this point 



84 The Greater Diseases 

somewhat, as I consider it im- 
portant.* 

Case of Tawniness of Skin, 
Bronchial Catarrh, and Cough. 

The tawn}^ skin is met with 
in greatest perfection in those 
who have lived in hot conntries ; 
and, where this dirty-looking 
dinginess of the skin is not 
from constitutional disease, or 
inherited from phthisically-dis- 
posed parents* it is quite amenable 
to treatment. The tawny dis- 
coloration can be more or less 
removed. This tawniness I re- 



*See, on this subject, my " Five 
Years' Experience in the New Cure of 
Consumption." 






of the Liver. 85 

gard as chronic subicterism, and, 
indeed, the anti-icterics cure such 
cases beautifully. They general^ 
take a good deal of time to be 
really and permanently cured, 
and a whole series of such 
remedies have to be brought into 
play in succession, one after the 
other, together with here and there 
an inter-current nosode; but at 
times the\^ will mend quickl}- from 
one or two remedies only. 

Thus at the beginning of the 
current year a cit}^ merchant, 
fifty-five 3^ears of age, came to 
consult me for a cough, with a 
bronchial catarrh. The tawniness 
of his skin was very marked, and 
this he attributed to a twenty 



86 The Greater Diseases 

years' residence in Africa. The 
cough was habitual, and worse in 
the evening. There are a good 
many crescentic cutaneous efflor- 
escences on his chest. 

Two months of Hydrastis Cana- 
densis <t>. 

He took altogether just an 
ounce, in small material doses. 
Cured the cough; reduced the 
catarrh of the bronchial lining to 
a minimum ; and very materially 
lessened the tawniness of his skin ; 
many of his friends remarking 
upon the very striking improve- 
ment in his seemingly dirty com- 
plexion. I should have followed up 
with some three or four other 
anti-icterics, but the gentleman 



of the Liver. 87 

considered he was well enough, 
and would not come any more, 
even u to please his wife." 

The Complexion of the Skin in 

its Relation to Liver 

Affections. 

That the compexion is more 
or less modified in certain affec- 
tions of the liver is pretty patent 
to all the world, and the least 
observant readily remarks that 
" So-and-so's liver cannot be 
right." Nevertheless, when people's 
skins are in an unhealthy state 
they commonl}^ treat the skin, 
or go to a skin doctor, who is 
pretty sure to regard his specialty 
as the first, and treats the skin, 



88 The Greater Diseases 

generally d^en face, with washes 
and ointments and the like. 

I have tried to combat this 
view in my " Diseases of the 
Skin from the Organismic Stand- 
point/' but, I am afraid, with 
too little success. 

The skin gets its life from 
within ; it is fed from within from 
the blood, and it is from the 
within that a good complexion 
must be obtained. • One cannot 
make an unhealthy skin healthy 
by any washes or ointments 
whatsoever. 

I have preached this doctrine 
before and oft, but few will listen, 
and hence I am going to preach 



of the Liver. 89 

it again, so that I may at least 
be able to say dixi et animam 
meam salvavi. 

Take a person whose skin is 
jaundiced. Does anyone propose 
to wash the 3^ellow skin white ? 

And if not, why not ? It were 
almost as rational as to try to 
get a good complexion from any 
powders and washes whatsoever, 
and yet the deluded apply such 
things daily in faith believing. 

Large Varicose Vein; Enlarge- 
ment of Liver. 

It might be wondered at, that 
I should give a case of varicosis 
in a work devoted to the main 



go The Greater Diseases 

diseases of the liver, but, as a 
matter of fact, the case is so 
unique that I add it here lest it 
be lost, and because I hardly know 
where it would fit in better. 

At the beginning of 1889, a 
young lady was brought to me 
by her mother for a large varicose 
vein running from her right 
shoulder, over the right clavicle, 
and across the upper half of the 
right side of the chest. It varied 
in size somewhat, and at its 
largest was about the size of an 
ordinary quill. 

Being great society people this 
vein quite cast a shadow over 
their lives, it being " quite im- 
possible, you know, to dress." 



of the Liver. 91 

One sees the oddest things in 
the way of varicose veins in the 
lower half of the body, but not 
very often in the upper, as 
gravitation is enough to empty 
them when they are higher up. 

All kinds of treatment had 
been applied, or applied to, and 
quite lately the vein had been 
treated by that wonderful cure- 
nothing — electricity. 

I reasoned thus : Veins that 
dilate in that manner, steadily, 
slowly, increasingly, must do so 
from an obstruction in their pro- 
gression heartwards, just as the 
little rivulets higher up the stream 
must fill up when the stream is 
dammed up lower down. 



92 The Greater Diseases 

From a rather careful physical 
survey of the parts involved, I 
found the liver very large — indeed 
huge, which was probably ac- 
counted for by the fact that 
patient had thrice had ague, or 
else three attacks of the same. 
Her skin was dirty, dingy-looking, 
and the portion covering the lower 
end of the breast bone studded 
with wee flat warts, and the 
degree of anaemia was consider- 
able. Moreover, she had a dis- 
agreeable cough, and her sleep 
was not good. 

An ounce of Chelidonium </>, 
spread over eleven weeks, restored 
the liver to its normal size, and 
the varicosis had almost entirely 



of the Liver. 93 

diappeared, so that patient had 
again taken to evening dress — 
respectively, undress. Her skin at 
the same time became clearer, and 
her blood of evidently better quality. 

Case of Gallstones. 
The wife of a well-known 
clergyman came under my obser- 
vation on the \2th of June, 1889, 
for gallstones. Competent medical 
men had attended her in these 
attacks, and had diagnosed gall- 
stones. Patient had turned fifty, 
and is the mother of many children. 
Her attacks began with sharp 
agonizing pains in the pit of the 
stomach, extending to the arms, 
and with them severe vomiting ; her 
breath is very short; her bow r els 



94 The Greater Diseases 

are costive, and she is a martyr 
to flatulent dyspepsia. 

Being a rich woman, she had 
sought the best advice in London, 
but to no avail. Her physicians 
had stated that nothing more 
could be done. Her lower ex- 
tremities had begun to swell, and 
this, coupled with loss of flesh, 
dyspnoea, and a very darkly icteric 
coloration of the skin, seemed to 
corroborate the given prognosis, 
and the more so as patient's able 
physicians had long tried their 
best with such remedies as are 
current in the orthodox school of 
medicine. 

But knowing well their , poverty 
in remedies, and in knowledge of 



of the Liver. 95 

remedies, I set about treating 
this lady precisely as if she had 
never had anj^ medical treatment 
at all. 

Thirteen months later, while I 
am actually writing these notes, 
she is plump, healthy looking, and 
touring with her husband in Scot- 
land, and she has had no pains at 
all for just eleven months. Friends 
who have not seen her for some 
time are barely able to recognize 
her because of her changed 
appearance. 

Her remedies were Hydrastis 
Canadensis, Bryonia alba, Thuja 
Occident., Heloninum, Strophanthus, 
and intercurrently, for far-reaching 



96 The Greater Diseases 

constitutional effects, two common 
nosodes in high dilutions. 

The change in this lady's 
disposition is rather remarkable, 
as from being dull, taciturn f 
unengaging, and almost socially 
uncivil, she has become bright, 
affable and chatty. The fact is, 
our brightness and chatty sunni- 
ness in our social life do verily 
depend much upon the liver. 

Cholesterinum in Tumour of 
Liver. 

This is obtained from gall ; I 
believe from that of the bullock. 
I learned its use of the late Dr. 
Ameke, of Berlin, author of the 



of the Liver. 97 

" History of Homoeopathy/' trans- 
lated into English by (alas, also 
the late) Dr. Alfred Drysdale, 
sometime of Cannes. 

Ameke claimed to have de- 
rived much advantage from its use 
in cancer of the liver. This is a 
weighty statement, and is true. I 
believe I have twice cured cancer 
of the liver with it; and, in 
obstinate hepatic engorgements 
that, by reason of their obstinacy, 
make one think interrogatively of 
cancer, the effects of Cholesterine 
are very satisfactory : at times 
even striking. 

I commonly use the 3 X trit. 
in six-grain doses three times a 
day, but this will here and there 

H 



98 The Greater Diseases 

act very violently, and when this 
happened I have found the third 
centesimal trituration effective. 

Sometimes one meets with 
cases in which there appears to 
be a semi-malignant affection, in- 
volving the left lobe of the liver, 
and what lies between it and the 
pylorus and the pancreas, and 
here Cholesterine 3 X and Iodofor- 
miun 3 X , in four-hourly alternation, 
have several times rendered me 
sound service. 

I may relate one such. Sum- 
moned 60 miles into the country 
late one afternoon, to a supposedly 
d^dng lady of 60 odd years of age, 
I found her icteric, vomiting, 
bathed in cold perspiration, very 



of the Liver. 99 

thin, debile ; the pulse small and 
weak, and patient seemingly almost 
moribund. Nothing would stay on 
the stomach. The seat of the 
affection was the left lobe of the 
liver, extending to the left and 
towards the navel. That there 
were gallstones is probable, but, 
quite outside of the acute attack, 
there was a chronic affection of 
some kind in the region just 
named, evidenced by swelling and 
tenderness. 

Kalibich. 5 relieved; CJwlesterine 
3 X and Iodof 3 X cured in a month, 
and, the case being of long stand- 
ing, the cure converted several 
families to the contemned pathy 
of Samuel Hahnemann. 



ioo The Greater Diseases 

But, allowing for all doubtful- 
ness and vagueness in what I here 
relate, Cholesterine is my sheet- 
anchor in organic liver disease in 
which the commoner hepatics — 
Che lid. , Cardials, Myrica, Kali bich. , 
Merc., and Diplotaxis tenuifolia 
have failed. 

I do not think that Cholesterine 
has any influence upon the " dis- 
position" to cancer, but it acts by 
reason of its elective affinity for 
the seat of the disease ; it effects 
therefore not a cure in the Hun- 
terian sense, inasmuch as it 
only gets rid of the product of the 
disease, but that is something, as 
there is then a temporary cure, 
which under favourable circum- 



of the Liver. 101 

stances may become permanent, 
proof of which permanence of cur- 
ative resnlts I will presently ad- 
duce. In this case the cure has 
proved to be permanent, as now 
(two years since) the lady is in 
capital health, and on a visit to 
her daughter in the North of 
England. 



io2 The Greater Diseases 



Curing the Incurable — 
The Insolence of Ignorance. 

" L,e cancer est incurable parcequ' on 
ne le guerit pas ordinairement; on ne 
peut le guerir puisqu 'il est incurable, 
done quand on le guerit e'est qu'il n' 
existait pas." — Duparcque. 

The saying of Duparcque which 
stands at the head of this, pithily 
puts the whole question; the thing 
has not changed, dest alors comme 
alors. 

This I will dwell upon very 
briefly now, and at the same time 
bear the very highest testimony 



of the Liver. 103 

to the virtues of Cholesterine in 
cancer of the liver. 

On January 30///, 1889, an 
American gentleman, confessing 
to sixty-five years of age, and on 
a visit to his daughter, married to 
an English clergyman in the north, 
was accompanied to mj T rooms by 
the said daughter, so ill was he 
that had I thereafter heard of his 
immediate demise I should have 
been not in the very least 
astonished. 

The note taken at the time 
stands thus in my case book under 
the above date . . . Thin, 
weak, debile; yellow conjunctivae ; 
insomnia ; verj^ nervous and ap- 



104 The Greater Diseases 

prehensive. Been treated for en- 
larged liver and had lots of calomel 
and chloral. His skin is tawny, 
cachectic. There is a swelling of 
the liver or of the pancreas — 
probably malignant disease of the 
left lobe of the liver. Always suf- 
fered from dyspepsia. Been a 
great ocean traveller. "I am 
very fond of salt, and eat a great 
deal." Is a practical teetotaler. 
Bones of the fingers very knobby. 
He is a spring-and-fall ailer. Has 
lost a stone weight since Novem- 
ber. Never been ill but ailing, 
and has taken much medicine: 
bromides and chloral, urethran. 
Very chilly. He is very ill. Urine 
normal. Has had ague, and been 
twice vaccinated. 



of the Liver. 105 

I ordered him six grains 
of the third decimal trituration 
of Cholestermum every four hours, 
and requested him to call 
in a few days. The married 
daughter demanded my candid 
opinion, and I said it was, in my 
judgment, cancer of the liver, 
when she informed me that that 
was the unanimous opinion of all 
their medical advisers, the most 
trusted of whom were quite sure 
the lethal end was not far off. 

That would also have been my 
opinion had I not seen Cholesterine 
bring back hope in several des- 
perate cases of cancer of the liver. 
I therefore felt warranted in stating 
that I thought our remedies care- 



106 The Greater Diseases 

fully and persistently applied might 
yet cure him. In a few days 
patient returned to me in com- 
pany with his daughter, and I 
hardly like to say what the change 
was, so great was the amelioration. 
He looked vastly improved and 
walked firmly, and indeed already 
considered himself on the high 
road to recovery, almost wondering 
what all the fuss had been about. 

When Mr. D. R. had retired, 
his daughter very anxiously said, 
" What do you think, now?" 
I said I had not altered my 
opinion; and that the improvement 
was due to the remedy and not 
natural recovery, and that the said 
improvement would have to be 



of the Liver. 107 

followed up with close scientific 
treatment which might, and indeed 
most likely would, result in a 
positive and direct art-cure. I 
also tried to. explain that we had 
begun successfully and rapidty to 
deal with the product of the dis- 
ease, and that done we could pro- 
ceed to deal with the disposition 
thereto. I ordered patient to go 
on another few days with the pre- 
scription which I had given to 
him at first (Cholest.,) and then to 
report himself to me. 

In about half an hour there- 
after the daughter returned with 
her husband, and the latter almost 
flew r at me in very rage. "What," 
said he, " do you mean to tell me 



io8 The Greater Diseases 

that my wife's father has cancer?" 
" Yes." And that yon are going 
to cnre him?" " Yes. I think 
I shall, bnt I am not sure." Here- 
upon he raised his voice somewhat 
and repeated his questions so 
offensively that I turned away 
from him and he left. I have never 
seen or heard of any of them 
since ; nor have I ever since seen 

the wife's sister, Lady , whom 

I cured in 1886 of a Thickening 

of the Cardia, but Lady 's 

cure was a truly Hunterian one, 
and she has been quite well for 
long. I have been so often 
amazed at the insolence of ignor- 
ance that I not infrequently find 
it hard to bear with equanimity. 
Thus here I was positively in- 



of the Liver. 109 

suited, essentially because I knew 
more on a given point than certain 
others, viz., that Cholesterine will 
at any rate curatively modify some 
cases that seem to be hepatic 
carcinosis. 

Still, I thank God and take 
comfort . . . they know not 
what they do. 

People who are sick of some 
chronic disease and are given over 
to their fate by those who ought 
at least to have the courage of 
hopefulness, find not infrequently 
their greatest enemies in their 
nearest relations, who resent 
efforts at cure. These Job's com- 
forters seem to regard determined 
efforts to cure their friends as 



no The Greater Diseases 

personal insults. This pheno- 
menon I have observed so often 
that I have wondered what the 
explanation thereof might be : in 
ultimate analysis it would seem 
to be human vanity. They have 
pronounced the case hopeless, and 
therefore it is so and not otherwise. 

Ubi morbus ibi remedium. 

This idea is very old, and 
clings to mankind with wonderful 
tenaciousness. On this is founded 
Ameke's conception which, had he 
been spared would, I think, have 
resulted at least in the discovery 
of notable remedies for which 
clinical experience would subse- 
quently have afforded fixed indi- 
cations. 



of the Liver. in 

Tumour of Liver of great 
size Cured by Cholesterinnm. 

A country squire Hearing 
seventy years of age came under 
my observation in the early part 
of 1889 f° r a very large tumour 
clearly connected with the left lobe 
of the liver. Patient was so ill 
that he reached town with diffi- 
culty, and became so weak that 
it was impossible for him to return. 

Orthodoxy well represented 
had given him up ; and his pro- 
found adynamia and cachectic 
look warranted me in stating that 
I had but small hope. But he 



ii2 The Greater Diseases 

was a plucky fellow — a type of 
the British aristocrat (born to 
govern and fit therefor : because 
living out of doors and not reading 
books — Beaconsfield) and he was 
willing to obey to the letter. 

I advised him to go to the 
Grand Hotel and quarter himself 
in the sunny front high up out of 
the dirt and din, and there abide. 
He did so, and a very pleasant 
abode that is : the sun streaming 
in ; the quiet ; and yet the outlook 
upon the seething mass below, 
which keeps from stagnation. 

A homoeopath for half a cen- 
tury he had boundless faith in 
Nux Vomica, but I told him that 



of the Liver. 113 

I was sure Nux would not cure 
him, and as this visibly depressed 
him, I said I would give him my 
medicine, but in alternation with 
it he should have his Nux. Hence 
this was given in alternation with 
Cholesterine. The tumour slowly 
disappeared, the liver went down 
to the state it had been in for forty 
years, i.e. the left lobe somewhat 
bulging, and patient returned to 
his country seat in about two 
months, and ever since he is not, 
as a rule, conscious of possessing 
a liver at all, though once in a 
way he feels a little uneasy in the 
hepatic region. This I know, as 
patient has long been worried with 
vesical catarrh, and for this I am 
now treating him, keeping all the 



ii4 The Greater Diseases 

time a certain amount of attention 
directed to the hepatic region in 
case of any fnrther explosion ; for 
I do not imagine that the cure 
thus far is a truly Hunterian one. 

True, the tumour is gone and 
may never recur, and the gentle- 
man has a very healthful look ; but, 
after all, the tumour is not itself the 
disease, but the disease-product. 

I would not be understood to 
maintain that a tumour which 
thus goes from drug action on the 
ubi morbus tin remedhim idea must 
necessarily recur, but that it may. 
But I will continue on this same 
subject in my next chapter. 

At the time of going to press 
this gentleman continues well. 



of the Liver. 115 

Amekean Treatment of Hepatic 
Tumours ; Hepatic Cancer. 

About five years ago, a gentle- 
man of 67 or thereabouts came 
under my observation for a 
swelling under the right ribs that 
competent authorities had diag- 
nosed as of a cancerous nature. 
It had come a good many months 
subsequent to an accident : a cab 
wheel having gone over the body 
at the part mentioned. He had 
been under a good West-end 
homoeopathic physician who had 
agreed, after close examination, to 
the diagnosis, and declared posi- 
tivefy to the gentleman's wife that 
he had no hope whatever of curing 



n6 The Greater Diseases 

the case, and he thought it his 
duty to say so. 

The whole thing was quite 
cured with remedies in about a 
year; the most striking, palpable 
result being observed after the use 
of Cholesterinein different dilutions, 
though numerous remedies were 
needed as well, notably Carduus 
MamcE^^ Chelidonium majus$,Myrica 
cerifera 3 X , Iodium i, Kali bich. 5, 
and Nat. mur. 6 trit. 

Five years have elapsed and 
there has been no recurrence of 
tumour, and during the whole of 
the five years the gentleman has 
only been away from his business 
for three weeks, and that was to 
go to the seaside last August. 



of the Liver. 117 

A few days since I saw his 
wife on her own account, when 
she reported him " quite well." 

This certainly looks like a 
Hunterian cure. I can now report 
on another and very similar case, 
as follows : — 



Another Cholesterinum Case. 

Nearly six years ago, indeed a 
little longer, as it was early in the 
year 1873, I was required to treat 
a liver case almost exactly like the 
foregoing one. But patient was 
not much over fifty years of age 
then, and it arose primarily, it was 
thought, from adhesive peritonitis 



u8 The Greater Diseases 

of long before. For years this 
gentleman, a county man, had 
felt the jolting in a carriage at 
first uncomfortable, and latterly so 
painful that he had got into the 
habit of holding his hand against 
the swelled part to support it and 
prevent its feeling the effects of the 
shaking. 

With the sole addition of Me- 
dorrh. C. the treatment was as in 
the last case, and of about the 
same duration, viz., about a year, 
and with an equally satisfactory 
result: he got well, and has re- 
mained well to date, working very 
hard almost all the time. This I 
know, as he has come about four 
times a year to be assured that his 



of the Liver, 119 

old enemy had been, not merely 
scotched, but killed. 

In this case I myself originally 
gave a bad prognosis to the gen- 
tleman's wife, and it was the 
Cholesterm that brought life and 
hope into the matter. It is very 
difficult to cure a tumid mass of 
any kind with one remedy : one 
needs Organ opathy, Homoeopathy, 
Amekeanism, and empiricism, 
together with theories no end, if 
the full extent of the possible -is 
to be attained. 

In my judgment the full range 
of the art-cure of disease by rem- 
edies used on scientific lines starts 
from the due recognition of the 
primary seat of the disease, and of 



120 The Greater Diseases 

the remedies that electively affect 
such primary seat. This, I take it, 
is the homoeopathic specificity of 
seat. Experience teaches me that 
if we are to avoid false issues in 
treatment we must start with diag- 
nosing, if possible, where the malady 
is primarily located. At any rate, 
I find this the shortest 'way to curing. 
If this be neglected we not infre- 
quently cover and cure the symp- 
toms, leaving the malady itself 
more or less untouched. 

No doubt — and on this I lay 
some stress — when the symptoms 
are scientifically {i.e. homceopath- 
ically) covered and cured, the dis- 
ease causing the symptoms is at 
the same time often radically cured 
also ; but also, and not seldom, the 



of the Liver. 121 

symptoms are got rid of, but the 
disease remains. 

It has been urged that any 
untrained person can treat hoinceo- 
pathically by mechanically cover- 
ing the symptoms ; and no doubt, 
this is, to some extent, true. But 
such cures are not worth much ; 
they do not reach very far, and are 
only of practical value when the 
malady and the symptoms are 
convertible terms. The simil- 
limum of the symptoms may, or 
may not be the simillimum of the 
malady ; if of the latter, we have 
an ideal therapy beyond which 
there is nought to be desired; if 
of the symptoms only, we are apt 
to keep on curing our patients till 
they die. 



122 The Greater Diseases 

If homoeopathy is to go on 
advancing we must face the 
question of getting behind the 
symptoms, so that we may not 
only treat the symptoms homoeo- 
pathically, but also the malady 
in its essence. In other words, 
it will not suffice to find the 
simillimum of the symptoms, but 
that being found, it will be 
needful to put this pertinent 
question : Is this symptomatic 
simillimum also homoeopathic to 
the anatomical essence of the 
malady itself? 

In the simple and well-defined 
forms of disease affecting an 
isolated organ, Paracelsic homoeo- 
pathy or organopathy is a very 



of the Liver. 123 

valuable guide to cure, and helps 
to define the disease and to fix 
its cure with the pathologic simile. 

This results from a recognition 
that certain organs of the body 
are, as it were, organisms within 
the organism ; minor systems 
within the general system. They 
have special individualism, both 
as to their functions and as to 
their diseases. Such an organ 
is the liver. It can be made 
ill by the organism, but, in its 
turn, it can make the organism 
ill. They act and re-act upon 
one another. Neither can exist 
without the other. 

Certain drugs have been dis- 
covered by man, almost in all 



124 The Greater Diseases 

places and at all times, that 
have an elective affinity for these 
organs, and these drugs have 
some of them received names 
indicative of their action, hence 
we have head medicines, spleen 
medicines, liver medicines. 

This small volume is intended 
to shew that the greater or more 
common Diseases of the Liver 
can, for the most part, be 
readily cured by hepatics or 
liver medicines. 

Inasmuch as a large number 
of hepatics are well-known to us, 
our chief difficulty lies in finding 
out which remedy will cure a given 
case. How far I have succeeded 
in overcoming this difficulty is 



of the Liver. 125 

shewn in these pages, and where 
I fail, others, beginning where I 
leave off, may succeed. 

The cure of organ-diseases by 
organ-remedies is often called 
organopathy, and this it was that 
very largely constituted the prac- 
tice of Paracelsus, and for which 
he was hounded to death. His 
success was so great that envy 
and hatred arose and fiercel}- 
attacked him. There can be no 
doubt that Paracelsus was foully 
murdered by the hired servants 
of his fellow-practitioners; and 
oh ! the number of medical tomtits 
that have thrown dirt on his 
memory all through the after- 
living generations! 



126 The Greater Diseases 

For all that, his great genius 
flames still right above the 
horizon, lighting up the life-paths 
of such as have the power to see. 
It supplies light, but not eyes. 

I would remind those homoeo- 
pathic practitioners who throw 
their little handfuls of dirt at 
Paracelsus that it was he — 
Paracelsus — who planted the acorn 
from which the mighty oak of 
homoeopathy has grown. 

It was just as impossible for 
Paracelsus to work out a homoeo- 
pathic equation on the purely 
scientific ground of drug physiology 
or provings as did Hahnemann, as 
it was impossible for the farmers in 
the time of Hahnemann to use the 



of the Liver. 127 

steam plough, i.e. it was not there 
to be used. 

I have long maintained that 
organopathy is elementary homoeo- 
pathy — that in the very nature of 
things, homoeopathy necessarily 
includes organopathy. 

Paracelsus was an organopath, 
being the founder of organopathy. 
I think it most likely that he 
picked up its elements and ele- 
mentary principles on his travels, 
applied them in practice, and 
having made cures that have rarely 
been equalled, he systematized it. 
Personally I acknowledge my great 
indebtedness to Paracelsus, (largely 
through Rademacher) with all 
gratitude. I am constantly and 



128 The Greater Diseases 

increasingly impressed with the 
importance of ascertaining the 
exact primary seat of any localised 
malady, and I have been driven to 
this by certain of my failures in 
purely symptomatic treatment. 
To really and radically heal of 
disease, one must often dig down 
and find out where the fans et origo 
mali is, and to this end Paracelsic 
organ-testing is of the very greatest 
service, indeed it often leads to the 
most important clinical discovery. 
And what may the most important 
clinical discovery be ? That which 
necdextrosum, nee sinistrosum leads 
straight to the goal of every true 
physician — mastery over disease, 
i.e., its direct art-cure. 



of the Liver. 129 



Case of Gallstones and 
Asthma. 

It must be nearly ten years 
ago that a widow lady from abroad 
came to consult me for asthma 
and biliary calculi : and I will 
relate her case, not only because 
it is apposite as a cure of a liver 
affection, but because the lady has 
been more or less within my pro- 
fessional ken ever since, and at 
this present time she is in very 
good health, and for long has 
had neither Asthma nor Gallstone 
attacks. 

Another point of interest for 
me lies in the fact that four w r ell- 

K 



130 The Greater Diseases 

known homoeopathic physicians 
had treated the case during over 
three years with only indifferent 
success. They treated the symp- 
toms without any physical diag- 
nosis, and, after having prescribed 
for the symptoms and temporarily 
cured many of them, the patient 
remained pretty much where she 
was before. Had they gone 
into the case they would have 
found that the bronchial asthma, 
retching, and vomiting had their 
point de depart in the gall bladder. 

No doubt this had again its 
origin in the constitutional crasis 
of the individual, and hence I 
began the treatment with very 
infrequent doses of Psoricum 30. 



of the Liver. 131 

This much lessened the pain in 
the right side, and it greatly 
relieved the cough. Then during 
about five weeks patient was under 
the influence of Chelidonium 1, and 
pain and cough quite disappeared. 

In a fortnight the pain starting 
from the gall bladder returned, and 
was accompanied with much retch- 
ing. Patient was of opinion that 
the side pain had originally come 
from taking such quantities of 
phosphorus for her cough years 
ago. At any rate, she affirmed 
that she never felt pain in this 
region before. 

There is no return of asthma 
since she left off the Chelidonium. 



132 The Greater Diseases 

I next prescribed Terebinthina 
3 X , four drops in water three times 
a day. The Tereb. rather upset 
her at first, and then she got 
better. 

After this an attack of gall 
colic came on from exertion. 

The duskiness of the skin, and 
the big brown patches on the 
forehead, led me to give Nux. It 
did much good, and under its 
influence patient's skin became 
lighter and cleaner. Then followed 
Thuja 30, and subsequently at odd 
intervals, according to the symp- 
toms, Mercurius vivus, Antimon. 
tart. 3, Pulsatilla 3 X , Cholesterine 2, 
/pec, Alnus rub., Nat. SuL 6, and 
Calc. carb. 30. 



of the Liver. 133 

But these were mostly for the 
gallstones, as there had never been 
any return of the asthma after the 
Psoricum followed by the Cheli- 
donzum, and that is more than nine 
years ago. 

This I consider the more re- 
markable, as both her own mother 
and her own son had asthma ; and 
an asthmatic lady, daughter and 
mother of individuals similarly 
afflicted, would hardly have a tran- 
sitory or spurious kind of asthma. 



134 The Greater Diseases 

Rademacher's Hepatic. 

Rademacher's liver medicines 
are Quassia, Chelidonium, Liquor 
calc. mur., Nux vom., Crocus, and 
Carduus, though he does not reckon 
the last-named as solely an hepatic. 
These remedies have been already 
sufficiently considered, excepting 
Crocus and Quassia, and of this 
latter I have myself no experience, 
and will therefore pass it by. Of 
the former I will presently speak. 

Rademacher on the Influence 
of Saffron on the Liver. 

Crollius, in his treatise, De 
signaturis internis rerum, cites 
Saffron as a remedy for jaundice. 



of the Liver. 135 

Radeinacher had been treating liver 
diseases with Carduus, and, finding 
the prevailing genius of disease 
alter (which he recognised from 
the fact that Carduus had ceased 
to cure the then prevailing liver 
affections), he began to test afresh 
for the remedy, and believed he 
had found it in Quassia. 

A man of sixty years of age 
came under his observation for a 
painful chest affection, with fever, 
cough, and bloody expectoration — 
(we should now call such a case 
pneumonia, broncho-pneumonia, or 
pleuro-pneumonia, probably). 

The action of Quassia was fair, 
but not so pronounced and rapid 
as Rademacher was accustomed 



136 The Greater Diseases 

to, and hence he concluded that 
he was not dealing with a real 
Quassia liver disease. 

Patient took the Aqua quassicz 
for a week with some obvious 
benefit, when, tiring of its taste, 
Saffron was added to colour and 
mask it. Result : rapid and com- 
plete cure. 

Subsequent observations shewed 
that the curative virtue lay in the 
Saffron, and not in the Quassia, 

Dysenteria Hepatica cured by 

Crocus. 

Fever, colic, vomiting, rectal 

tenesmus, slimy, sanguineous, non- 

foecal motions, easily and promptly 



of the Liver. 137 

cured with small doses of the tinc- 
ture of Saffron, because dependent 
upon a primary affection of the 
liver curable by Saffron. 

" In former years I should," 
says Rademacher, " have rushed 
into print in the medical journals 
and proclaimed Saffron as the 
greatest liver medicine extant, 
but since Paracelsus has broken 
my spectacles I see nature with 
my eyes alone, and it is now 
manifest to me that we cannot 
ascribe to any organ-remedy what- 
soever absolute and unconditional 
curative power, but that the really 
clear and obvious revelation of the 
same depends upon the kind of the 
epidemic genius of disease that 



138 The Greater Diseases 

happens for the time-being to 
be prevailing." 

Those who know their Syden- 
ham will appreciate this. 

Rademacher's Cure of 
Gallstones. 

Rademacher's observations are 
in all cases so reliable that I deem 
it a useful undertaking to give, in 
short, the gist of his experience of 
the medicinal cure of Gallstones. 

Carduus, he maintains, is facile 
prince ps in the attack ; nothing 
equals it, he says. He was once 
enabled to recognise the presence 
of biliary calculi in the following 
extraordinary manner: — 



of the Liver. 139 

An elderly man, who had 
formerly complained of heartburn, 
fulness, and regurgitation after 
food, was seized with violent colic, 
and, as all the abdominal remedies 
were without effect, he concluded 
that the abdominal affection 
was symptomatic of some other 
primarily diseased organ. He 
was sent for at an unusual hour 
to hear from the good man's wife 
that a bandage with a knot in it at 
once stopped the pain. From this 
he concluded that only a mechanical 
affection could be thus mechanically 
helped. 

A slight and very peculiar feel- 
ing alone remained in the region 
of the gall bladder. Patient was 



140 The Greater Diseases 

treated during six months with 
Durand's remedy, and was thereby 
completely cured of his supposed 
stomachic affection and of his 
colic. He remained quite w T ell for 
twelve years. Then, after this long 
interval, the stony guest again put 
in an appearance, though under 
another guise. He again ad- 
ministered Durand's remedy 
whereupon the troubler ceased 
and came no more, the patient 
dying long after at a great age 
of senile marasm. 

Rademacher relates how the 
symptoms of pleurisy and even 
of pneumonia may be really those 
of biliary calculi, and he instances 
the case of the w r ife, or rather 



of the Liver. 141 

widow of an admiral who was 
cured of an attack of gallstone 
colic with DurandV remedy by 
him, and, being seemingly well, 
travelled to Berlin, but fell ill of 
the same affection which was mis- 
taken for pleurisy, and treated as 
such in the old antiphlogistic 
fashion with venesection and 
plasters, and under these the 
seventy-year old lady died. 

Rademacher cites the case as 
a warning to the careless or in- 
experienced. He then remarks 
that Sulphuric acid has the power 
of stirring up biliary calculi to 
activity. 

Of the tincture of Cardutis in 
the attacks of gallstone colic he 



142 The Greater Diseases 

recommends from 15 to 30 drops 
in a teacupful of water or milk five 
times a day. 

Mixture of Oil of Turpentine 

and Sulphuric ^Ether, or 

Durand's Remedy. 

Paracelsus says that the oil of 
turpentine was first discovered by 
the jatro-chemists, and he strongly 
recommends physicians to try the 
curative effects of the oil in 
diseased human organisms. 

Rademacher remarks, however, 
that as a rule physicians are more 
concerned to gain over the patient- 
world by saying smooth things to 
them than with the advancement 



of the Liver. 143 

of the healing art, and hence the 
recommendation was not followed 
and fell into oblivion. 

Paracelsus affirms that turpen- 
tine with the right appropriate or 
organ remedies is helpful in all 
indurations. 

Those who know of turpentine 
only that it is good for tapeworm, 
and that it, combined with aether, 
will dissolve gallstones, know but 
very little of its virtues. 

He thus summarises : " All we 
can with certainty maintain is, 
that the symptoms which we 
ascribe to the presence of biliary 
calculi are not merely silenced by 



144 The Greater Diseases 

turpentine in aether, but by its 
long continued use are got rid of 
so completely that patients remain 
thereafter free of their troubles for 
ever, or, at any rate, for many 
years." 

He finally remained true, after 
many trials, to a mixture of sixteen 
parts of Spirit sulph. ceth., and one 
of OL tereb. 

And as to dose : one must 
begin gently and cautiously with 
ten, and, in the very sensitive, with 
five drops of the mixture in half a 
cupful of water three times a day, 
and the dose must be slowly or 
rapidly increased according to the 
tolerance of each individual case. 



of the Liver. 145 

At first there is often a little 
pain in the liver soon after the 
dose, lasting a few minutes. This 
he declares is desirable, but the 
dose must not be increased till this 
pain has not been felt for a few 
days. Then the urine must be 
watched, and as soon as the urine 
begins to get darker in colour (in 
which case the patient at the same 
time is apt to complain of an 
uncomfortable sensation in the 
epigastrium), the said mixture 
must be temporarily stopped and 
Carduns administered till the dis- 
comfort in the epigastrium has 
gone, and until the urine has again 
become clear and of the colour of 
light straw. And then the mixture 
is to be resumed, but in a small 



146 The Greater Diseases 

dose— smaller than it was when 
left off, and the dose is not to be 
too hastily again augmented. 



Chronic Enlargement of the 

Liver cured by 

Podophyllum peltatum 6 X . 

In the month of June of the 
year 1883, a widow lady came 
under my observation for diarrhoea. 
It was clearly of hepatic nature, 
and patient felt as if she were sink- 
ing into the earth ; icy cold feet ; 
pains in the abdomen ; has' piles ; 
last year nearly had jaundice. 
A physical examination revealed 
chronic enlargement of the liver ; 



of the Liver. 147 

patient looked ill, and in very 
ill-health. 

With an enlargement of the 
liver, tenderness of the hepatic 
region, pains in the abdomen, 
piles, diarrhoea, and evident Ange- 
griffensein of the organism, I think 
the ordination of Podophyllum pelt. 
6 X may be fairly called scientific ; 
in fact, I maintain that the pre- 
scription was demonstrably and 
strictly scientific. 

It cured the patient slowly — 
seven weeks — surely, and perma- 
nently, and not only subjectively 
but objectively, for her improved 
appearance was very pronounced. 



148 The Greater Diseases 

I often r wonder in this age of 
science that its scientific spirit so 
much neglects the scientific thera- 
peutics of Samuel Hahnemann, 
particularly as Hahnemann has 
been so long dead. It cannot now 
make any difference to him ! And 
faith ! it makes no difference to 
me either. 

Then why do I stand up 
for homoeopathy so persistently 
if it makes no difference to me ? 

Why, indeed ? 

Only one reason. 

And what might that one 
reason be ? Shall I confess, or let 
the black secret die with me ? 



of the Liver. 149 

Just this : Homoeopathy is true, 
thafs all. 

And if true, why do people 
sneer at it ? 

Fools always do sneer at what 
they do not understand. 



150 The Greater Diseases 



Practice of Modern French 

Physicians in the Treatment 

of Hepatic Colic. 

M. Germain See, in " La 
Medecine Moderne," Nr. 6, 1890, 
treats of this subject, and shews a 
distinct advance on the common 
treatment of hepatic colic. 

He notes, that the Salicylate 
of Sodium is an excellent chola- 
gogue ; in watery solution the 
Salicylate of Sodium augments the 
biliary secretion, and particularly 
the watery part of the bile. And 
further, by a singular coincidence, 
this remedy, besides its action as 



of the Liver. 151 

a cholagogue, has a powerful anal- 
gesic action which, is of prime 
importance in the attack. 

He insists that in prescribing 
cholagogues great care should be 
taken in dissolving them in an 
ample quantity of fluid. 

Rademacher was clearly of the 
same view, for he gave each dose 
of Cardtms in a teacupful of fluid. 

M. See speaks also with much 
satisfaction of the free use of Olive 
Oil in biliary attacks. 

He considers purgatives con- 
tra-indicated. He also condemns 
all substances that lessen the 
biliary secretion, such as the 



152 The Greater Diseases 

salts of potassium, calomel, iron, 
copper, morphia, atropine, and 
strychnine. 

But as M. See ignores the 
double and opposite actions of 
large and small doses, we can 
only regard him, in practical phar- 
macodynamics, as a half-educated 
man ; and this, notwithstanding 
his pre-eminently leading position 
in the practice of modern medicine 
in France. But it is something 
to find anyone's practice addressed 
to the causes of the colic, rather 
than to silencing the pains, which 
are but effects, and which, being 
silenced, leave the morbid state of 
the sufferer as bad or even worse 
than it was before. 



of the Liver. 153 

Remarkable Case of Jaundice 

of Nine Years' duration; 
Gallstones of Large Size. 

I really finished writing this 
small treatise on Liver Diseases 
last autumn, and sent the MS. 
to the printers, on the day the 
date of which will be found at the 
foot of my preface. In this same 
preface mention is made of a 
case of chronic jaundice of long 
duration, which I then feared w T as 
hopelessly incurable. This work 
has been delayed at the printers 
until now, owing to w r ant of time 
on my part, and moreover, I have 
latterly delayed it somewhat on 
purpose, and in order that I may 



154 The Greater Diseases 

narrate the before-mentioned case 
referred to in the preface, in which 
I reflect upon the treatment 
of the case followed by a dis- 
tinguished representative of old- 
school medicine. 
■% 

I always hold that adverse 
criticism of a co-practitioner's work 
should be in the abstract, because 
it is not in any sense a question of 
persons. I also hold that whoso- 
ever criticises the work of another 
adversely, the same is morally 
bound to point out a better, a 
more excellent way, if he knows 
one. 

The plan followed by my pre- 
decessor in the treatment of this 
case was to lull the pain with 



of the Liver. 155 

morphia. Now, quite apart from 
the deteriorating influence of the 
drug (a question I do not propose 
here to discuss), it must be mani- 
fest that the pain arose from the 
gallstones; and thelullinginfluence 
of the morphia not only did not 
cure, or even tend to cure, but 
actually tended to prevent nature 
from helping herself. 

The physician knew perfectly 
well that he only relieved the pain ; 
he was quite conscious that it was 
in no sense a cure. " The thing," 
said he, "is incurable; the pain 
is, therefore, the legitimate object 
of palliative treatment." And I 
quite agree that a physician 
may not stand by and see 



156 The Greater Diseases 

pain without taking effective 
measures for its relief. 

But the patient's life comes 
first, not the pain ; and therefore, 
here everything hinges upon the 
question of curability or non- 
curability. Assuming that the 
case was really and truly incurable 
by medical art, then, of course, the 
lulling of the pain by morphia was 
right and proper, and moreover 
imperatively demanded on the 
ground of humanity alone ; and 
where a physician cannot cure he 
is at least bound to relieve pain. 
I therefore attach no blame to this 
physician personally, his error lies 
in his scholastic conceptions of 
what are the actual possibilities of 



of the Liver. 157 

« 

drugs in the direct art-cure of 
disease ; and in the unqestioning 
belief that what he and his fellow- 
believers in school-physic know, 
covers the entire field of the known 
and of the knowable, in curative 
medicine. 

Paracelsus is ridiculed and 
contemned; Rademacher is almost 
unknown in the wider sphere of 
medicine. Homoeopathy is not 
within earshot at all, i.e mj in the 
spheres that are deemed orthodox. 
It seems very odd, but all that is 
best in medicine, in so far as it 
relates to the art of healing is . . . 
outside ! 

Paracelsus is outside ; Rade- 
macher is outside ; Hahnemnn is 



158 The Greater Diseases 

<?zz/side ; the physician who gave 
morphia for the case tinder study 
is' ... . z/zside. 



I will now go on to the case in 
question by narrating that patient, 
a married lady, mother of a family, 
was brought to me by her husband 
with some difficulty, owing to her 
great weakness and loss of flesh. 

I noted as follows: — Mrs. X., 
38 years of age, eleven years mar- 
ried, mother of seven children, 
came under my observation on 
September 29, 1890. During the 
past three months intensely jaun- 
diced, and is given up as past all 
hope of recovery. 



of the Liver. 159 

During the past nine years her 
doctor has been giving her morphia 
to ease the pain in the right side, 
left side, and in the stomach, ab- 
domen, and hypogastrium respec- 
tively. At the present time she 
takes about a dozen quarter-grain 
pills of morphia a day ; she is 
emaciated to a painful degree. 
The spleen is very much hyper- 
trophied, and extends across to the 
mesial line and inferiorl}' down to 
the crest of the ilium; in fact, it 
practically fills the left half of the 
abdomen. It is very tender, and 
the contours of the big spleen can 
not only be felt but readily seen, 
as it rises above the surface. The 
liver is only very moderately en- 
larged, about an inch and a half 



160 The Greater Diseases 

beyond the ribs, towards the 
epigastrium. 

While I am examining her, 
patient appears very weak and 
faint, and hardly able to bear the 
undressing. Her eyes are lustrous, 
her tongue raw red. Urine is 
scanty ; loaded with bile ; bowels 
costive. The region of the gall- 
bladder and ducts very tender, but 
the greatest pain is in the pit of 
the stomach. Catamenia always 
scanty, and at present stopped. 
The motions are without bile, and 
moved with the very greatest diffi- 
culty. No appetite. In almost 
constant distress from the agoni- 
sing pains at the pit of the 
stomach. 



of the Liver. 161 

Patient had been twice vacci- 
nated, and years ago had severe 
ulceration of the womb, for which 
she lay in bed for three months, 
and during that period was six 
times cauterised. The cauterisa- 
tions, aided by many introvaginal 
injections and much lying-up, 
were followed by the disappearance 
of said ulcerations. 

I did not really know where to 
begin at in this formidable case, 
but in view of the severity of the 
epigastric pain, jaundice, consti- 
pation, &c, I ordered % Hydrastis 
Cci7t. </>, four drops in a table- 
spoonful of tepid water every four 
hours. This was the last day of 
September, 1890. 

M 



162 The Greater Diseases 

October 6th. The urine has 
begun to improve ; it is more 
watery, and not quite so full of 
bile ; the motions more natural, 
but the liver is very distinctly 
bigger than it was six days ago. 
I therefore feel justified in going 
on with the Hydrastis. 

i^t/i. — Patient's jaundiced skin 
is not quite so intensely black- 
yellow ; the pain has altered. 
There is very distinct, though not 
great, improvement; for the first 
time for very very long her period 
is full and free, which has much 
relieved her. The spleen is a trifle 
smaller; the tongue dry and glazed. 

I find on reference that a few 
doses of Thuja 30 were given inter- 



of the Liver. 163 

currently on the 6 th instant. Con- 
tinue with both Hydrastis <A and 
the Thuja 30. 

20th. — There is no longer any 
pain in the region of the gall-bladder; 
patient complains of cold shivers ; 
liver has gone down in size while 
the spleen is more swelled and 
very painful, and patient complains 
very much of chilliness. 

Ijk 7c. Urticce urentis 0, seven 
drops in water three times a day. 

27th. — No " spasms" ; pains 
in the spleen worse ; the spleen is, 
however, softer to the feel ; liver 
larger. To alternate Cardiacs 
Mar. <$> with the Urtica, every 
three hours. 



164 The Greater Diseases 

Nov. 3rd. — Spleen and liver 
both bigger, which I take to mean 
that they are being acted upon by 
the remedies, particularly as patient 
is not so chilly and is in less pain. 
Patient has never ceased to take 
about a dozen morphia pills every 
day; some days many more. 

To continue with the Carduus 
and Urtica. 

12th. — The jaundice is much 
worse ; the pains in the region of 
the gall-bladder are atrocious. I 
try to persuade the patient to 
leave off the morphia, so as to give 
the remedies a chance, but she 
appeals to me not to leave her 
unhelped in her agony ; I could 



of the Liver. 165 

not resist, and so consented to the 
morphia pills being continued. 

We had made a little progress 
in the case, but not much, and I 
therefore made a further and very 
careful survey of the aetiological 
history of the case, and came 
to the conclusion that the whole 
thing was of uterine origin. 

As I have had a good deal 
of clinical experience of Bursa 
pastoris, tending to shew that 
it is a remedy specifically 
affecting the womb in like 
manner as Chelidonium does the 
liver, I at once determined to test 
for the right appropriatum uteri, as 
I conceive Paracelsus or Rade- 
macher might have done. 



1 66 The Greater Diseases 

I reasoned from the clinical 
data taken in historic sequence 
that the primary affection years 
ago was uterine, and the hepatic 
affection consecutive thereto, and 
starting therefrom. I saw clearly 
that the old ulcerated condition 
was at the bottom of it, or rather 
that was as far back as I could get 
for the present. For although 
the cause of the ulcers was presum- 
ably the fans et origo mali, yet the 
real disease at present to be grappled 
with was the jaundice, the gall- 
stones, and the colic. 

In this case getting rid of the 
primary constitutional cause would 

not necessarily have mended mat- 
ters, therefore I started with Bursa 



of the Liver. 167 

pastoris </>, five drops in warm 
water every four hours. 

That was on the 12///, and by 
the 17 th there was a very extra- 
ordinary change come over the face 
of the case ; indeed, it was at first 
blush almost incredible. There 
was much less jaundice, the liver 
had gone down in size almost to 
normality, and the spleen was fully 
an inch smaller. Moreover, there 
was no pain in the liver at all. 

My inkling that the start of the 
disease of the biliary apparatus was 
in the womb being thus confirmed, 
indeed, rendered certain, I con- 
tinued with the Bursa as before. 



1 68 The Greater Diseases 

Nov. z^th. — Although there 
has been no further spasms, there 
has not been any further progress ; 
patient does not sleep so well ; the 
liver has again begun to enlarge, 
and there is no further diminution 
in the size of the spleen. Still, I 
did not feel justified in leaving off 
the Bursa, and hence I alternated 
it with Chelidonium *. 

December. — Patient was very 
ill, and everybody gave her up, 
excepting myself. I did not see 
my way out of the wood, but still 
I hold that the physician who gives 
up a case before the patient dies is 
on a par with the soldier who runs 
away from the enemy. So here, 
though I was absolutely alone in 



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of the Liver, 169 

my view, I refused to surrender. 
The bowels had ceased to act ; 
there was more jaundice again, 
and patient could no longer rise 
from her bed. 

I then gave Euonymin 3 X , six 
grains every two hours, just "as a 
liver remedy. Under very great 
agony patient in the course of a 
week or two passed a handful of 
gallstones by the bowels, and her 
jaundice was gone ! 

A number of the largest were 
obtained from the stools, and on 
account of the great interest of the 
case I now present my readers 
with a photogravure of them, taken 
by Sprague, of London, and which 
gives them in their natural size. 



170 The Greater Diseases 

I have shewn these biliary 
calculi to certain medical friends, 
and amongst them to Dr. Robert 
T. Cooper, of London, as a 
curiosity. 

I should explain that these 
biliary calculi were very much 
larger than here represented when 
they were first passed, but their 
outer layers were friable, and were 
washed, picked, and rubbed off 
before the calculi were brought 
to me ; it is really only the hard 
kernels of the calculi which are 
given in this photogravure. 

Notwithstanding the disappear- 
ance of the jaundice, and the 
passage of the gallstones as just 
described, patient had got very 



of the Liver. 171 

low, and the spleen did not seem 
to be any better subjectively, and 
not much smaller, and there was 
no period. 

Here I gave Ceanothus Am. i, 
five drops in water four times a 
day. 

1 5//?. — Patient has had severe 
rigors, seemingly caused by the 
Ceanothus, which is therefore dis- 
continued. She has no appetite, 
and the menstruation has not 
appeared. 

To have Pulsatilla 1, three drops 
in water every three hours. 

20th. — Liver nearly normal ; 
has just menstruated; the spleen 



172 The Greater Diseases 

has gone down a little; the entire 
abdomen very tender all over; has 
again had an awful attack of gall- 
stone colic, and passed a number 
of stones, one very large. There 
is still bile in the nrine. 

To have Bursa pas torts </>, and 
Nux Vom. 1. 

29th. — Another attack of colic; 
a further passage of biliary calculi 
— three large ones ; patient is low 
and weak, and prefers death to so 
much pain. It is to be remembered 
that large numbers of morphia pills 
are being taken all this time. To 
relieve the effects of the passage of 
the calculi, and the almost general 
feeling of bruisedness and tender- 



of the Liver. 173 

ness, I ordered Bellis perennis *, 
eight drops in water every four 
hours. 

1891, Jan. 12///. — Great general 
improvement from the use of the* 
Bellis perennis, but her liver and 
spleen are more swelled and great- 
ly distress her. 

R Trit. 3 X Cholesterin. Six 
grains dry on the tongue every 
four hours. 

19 t/i. — Spleen and liver seem 
larger than ever. No jaundice, 
however. No menses. 

Five drops of Pulsatilla three 
times a day. 



174 The Greater Diseases 

26th. — Has normally menstru- 
ated; liver smaller; spleen very 
tender. 

]jk Bursa pastoris <*>. Five drops 
in a tablespoonful of water three 
times a day. 

Feb. yd. — Has passed some 
more calculi; region of gall duct 
very tender; no jaundice; urine 
normal; is gaining flesh; the 
spleen is still very large. 

IJ> TV. Ceanothus Americanus 1. 
Five drops in water every four 
hours. 

13/72. — There is further improve- 
ment; she feels better; is begin- 
ning to go about like other people ; 



of the Liver. 175 

has passed one gallstone of small 
size, and a number of lumps of 
" sooty stuff." Feels that this 
medicine has done her much good. 
Rep. 

23rd. — The spleen has gone 
down about one inch and three- 
quarters; has menstruated again 
normally; is increasing in weight. 

Rep. 

March 16th. — By letter I am 
informed that the spleen is not so 
well ; and that there is a good deal 
of pain in the right side again. 

R> Trit. 3 X Leptandrin. Six 
grains dry on the tongue, three 
times a day. 



176 The Greater Diseases 

yist. — No improvement from 
the Leptandrin, and generally not 
so well, though the jaundice is 
entirely a thing of the past, and 
she is now of a very clear white 
complexion, and getting no longer 
to appear to be particularly thin. 

Jfy Bellis perennis <J> and Bursa 
pastor is in alternation. 

April i$tk. — Liver, spleen, and 
womb are described as " all blown 
out;" much pain in the region of 
the gall bladder. 

Ijk Puis, and Bryonia. 

May 4//Z. — Patient is doing 
well; liver normal, or nearly so; 
spleen now only reaches halfway 
down to the crest of the ilium, 



of the Liver. 177 

and is well defined. Patient has 
now the old symptoms of ulceration 
of the os uteri — the forcible healing 
up of which started the whole thing 
years ago ! 

And here I think I may resume, 
and conclude this already too long 
narration. 



We see in this case the import- 
ance of Paracelsic organ-testing to 
find out the point de depart of the 
series of morbid phenomena ; he- 
patics and splenics had no 
adequately curative action till the 
uterine medicine {Bursa pastoris) 
had touched the place of origin of 
the liver affection, and as soon as 

N 



178 The Greater Diseases 

this was done (see Notes under 
date November ijtA, 1890) imme- 
diate improvement began ! 

We have now cured the jaun- 
dice ; the gallstones have been got 
rid of through the natural ways; 
the liver is well, and patient is 
going about her business ; and our 
interest in the case in this TREA- 
TISE on "The Greater Diseases of 
the Liver" is at an end. 

Three Months Later. 

August ioth } 1891. — Having this 
day seen and carefully examined 
this patient I am enabled to say 
that she is in excellent health, 
plump and pleasing, and equal to 



of the Liver. 179 

and performing the usual duties of 
an English housewife with a large 
family. 



INDEX. 



PAGE. 

Acholia, Chelidonium in 17 

Amekean Treatment of Hepatic Tumours 115 

Analgesic Action of Salicylate of Sodium. .. 151 

Asthma occurring with Gallstones ... 129 

Badiaga in Chronic Biliousness 77 

Bellis perennis in Biliary Calculi 173 

Bilious Debility, Ferrum picricum in ... 72 

Bilious fevers ... ... ... ... ... 17 

Biliousness, Chronic, Chelidonium in ... 76 

Brassica Mur. in Sluggish Liver 62 

Bronchial Catarrh 84 

Bryonia in Gallstones 95 

Bursa pastoris in Uterine Disease 165 

Cancer, Hepatic 115 

lodum in 116 

Carduus Mar. 28, 43, 163 

" in Cancer of Liver 116 

" in Liver & Spleen Affections 30 
in Enlargement of Liver 

and Spleen ... ... 31 





180 Index. 

page. 

Cardnus Mar., Riel's proving of 35 

" in Transverse Enlarge- 
ment of Liver ... 36 
" in Gallstones 67, 71, 138, 141 

" in Dyspepsia 49 

Ceanothns in Enlarged Spleen 174 

Cervical Glands, induration of 34 

Chelidonium in Acholia ... 17 

in Cancer of Liver 116 

a Liver Specific 13 

an old Remedy for Jaundice 8 
in enlarged Liver with 

Jaundice 22 

in enlarged Liver with Con- 
gestion of Lung ... 23 
in Engorgement of Right 

Lung 26 

in Gallstones 67, 131 

" in Hepatic Colic ... 74, 81 

Jaundice cured by 7, 25 

in Perpendicular Enlarge- 

ment of Liver ... 37 
" Rademacher's experience of 13 
" in Varicose Veins from En- 
larged Liver 92 

Cholagogue, Salicylate of Sodium, a ... 150 



Index. 181 

PAGE. 

Cholesterine in Cancer of Liver ... 97,116 

in Gallstones 67, 72, 173 

in Tumour of Liver 

96, in, 113, 116, 117 

Colic, Hepatic 72,81 

" Berberis in ... 74 

" Carduus in ... ... ... 74 

" Chelidonium in 74, 81 

" Hydrastis in 74, 81 

Cough and Bronchical Catarrh 84 

Crocus in Dysenteria Hepatica 136 

Cure of Gallstones, Rademacher's ... 138 

Curing the Incurable 102 

Diplotaxis Tenuifolia 61, 100 

Durand's Remedy 140 

Composition of ... 142 

Dysenteria Hepatica cured 136 

Enormous Spleen 159 

Euonymin in Enlarged Liver 80 

in Jaundice ... ... ... 169 

in Gallstones ... ... ... 75 

Ferritin picricum in Bilious Debility ... 72 
French Physicians, Practice of, in Hepatic 

Colic 150 

Gallstones, Rademacher's cure of... ... 138 

Gallstones 62, 93 



1 82 Index. 

PAGE. 

Gallstones, Hydrastis iu 27, 63, 67, 71, 74 

with Organic Disease of Liver 65 
accompanied by Asthma ... 129 

Bilirubin in 67 

Chelidonium in 8, 67, 131 

Colic 72, 74, 81 

Heloninum in 95 

Ignatia in 67, 81 

lodoformum in 72 

Myrica cerifei a in 27 

Psoricum in ... 130 

Terebinth in ... 132 

Headache, Neuralgic, cured by Thuja ... 40 

Heloninum in Gallstones 95 

Hepatalgia, Chelidonium in 10 

Hepatica, Rademacher's 134 

Hepatic Cancer 115 

" Iodium in 116 

" Tumour, Amekean treatment of 115 
C hoi ester in e \w ... 96, 113 

Hughes', Dr., Pharmacodynamics 12 

Hydrastis in Gallstones ... 27, 63, 67, 71, 74 

in Tawniness of Skin 86 

in Enlarged Spleen 161 

Icterus Neonatorum, Myrica in 53 



Index. 183 

PAGE. 

Ignatia Amara in Gallstones 67 

72 

98 

116 

22, 25 

7, 25 

153 

158 



Iodoformum in Gallstones , 

" in Malignant Diseases of Liver .. 

Iodium in Cancer of Liver , 

Jaundice 1, 7, 

Catarrhal 

n Remarkable case of 

" Intense 

Kali Bichrom. in Cancer of Liver... 99, 116 

in Gallstones 71 

Leptandra Virginica in Liver Disease ... 56 
Leptandri?i in Spleen and Liver Disease... 175 
Liver, Enlargement of, with Jaundice ... 22 
" Hypertrophy of left lobe, with 

Sternal Patch 69 

Lung, Chelidonium in Engorgement of right 26 
" Congestion of right, with Enlarged 

Liver ... ... ... ... 23 

Medorrh. C. in Hepatic Tumour 118 

Muriatic Acid \ a Liver remedy ... ... 29 

Myrica Cerifera in Cancer of Liver ... 116 

" in Gallstones 27 

" in Icterus neonatorum ... 53 
" Dr. Leland Walker's prov- 
ing of. 55 

Natrum Mur 32, 116 



184 Index. 

PAGE. 

Natrum Sulphuricum in Liver Disease ... 39 

Neuralgia, Silicea in ... 80 

Neuralgic headaches, cured by Thuja ... 40 

Nux Vomica in Catarrh of Gall Ducts ... 17 
in Gallstones with Hepatic 

Disease ■ 67 

Olive Oil in biliary attacks 151 

Organopathy of Paracelsus 125 

Palpitation from enlarged liver 78 

Paracelsus' Organopathy 125 

Picric Acid in Debility from Jaundice ... 61 

Picrate of Iron in Bilious Debility 72 

Podophyllum a great Liver Remedy ... 57 
in chronic Hepatic Enlarge- 
ment 146 

" in Diarrhoea 57, 147 

Prunus Virginica in Gallstones 71 

Psoricum 77 

in Gallstones 130 

Pulsatilla in Gallstones 173 

Quassia, Action on Liver ... 135 

Rademacher's cure of Gallstones 138 

experience with Chelidonium 13 

Formula ... ... ... 29 

Hepatica 134 

Rademacher on small Doses .., ... 19 



Index. 



185 



PAGE. 

Remarkable case of Jaundice 153 

Riel's proving of Carduus ... ... ... 35 

Saffron, its influence on Liver ... ... 134 

Salicylate of Sodium a Cholagogue ... 150 

an Analgesic ... 151 

Sanguinaria Can. a Liver Medicine ... 57 

" in Gallstones 67 

Shortness of Breath from Enlarged Liver 78 

Skin, Complexion of, in Liver Affections... 87 

Skin, Tawniness of, Hydrastis in ... ... 84 

Sluggish Liver, Brassica Mur. in 61 

Small Doses, Rademacher on ... ... 19 

Specificity of Seat 120 

Spleen Affections, Ceanothus in 50 

" Enormous Enlargement of. 159 

Stahl, E., on Carduus 51 

Sternal Patch, the 44, 69 

Taraxacum in Liver Disease 39 

Tawniness of Skin, Hydrastis in ... ... 84 

Terebinth, in Gallstones 143 

in indurations ... ... ... 143 

Thlaspi Bursa Pastoris in Gallstones ... 75 

indications for use 76 

Thuja in Gallstones with Hepatic Disease 67 

" in indurated Cervical Glands ... 34 

" in Neuralgic Headaches ... ... 41 



i86 



Index. 



Tumour of Iyiver, Cholesterine in ... 

Turpentine in indurations 

Urtica urens 

Varicose Veins from Enlarged Liver 
Walker's, Dr. Leland, proving of Myrica 



PAGE. 

96 

143 

163 

89 

55 



Illustrations of Gallstones by the Photo- 
gravure process ... ...opposite 169 



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